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Task force recommends residential parking changes
(Published May 17, 2004)

A task force appointed by Mayor Anthony A. Williams is recommending major changes in the District’s regulations governing residential parking zones.

The recommendations include reducing the size of the zones by changing the current ward-based system to a neighborhood-based one, designating each of the D.C. Office of Planning’s 39 planning "clusters" as a residential parking zone.

The task force also recommends the institution of unspecified "surcharges" for purchasing residential parking permits in areas where parking demand exceeds supply and for all vehicles registered by a household after the first vehicle. The panel also suggests the use of auctions to allocate parking permits in areas where the number of registered vehicles exceeds the availability of on-street parking spaces.

Chaired by Ward 3 resident Christopher Lively, the task force included 29 "community members" – either D.C. business representatives or residents – and representatives of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Public Works and the Department of Transportation. Ward 6 and Ward 8 were not represented on the panel, and Ann Curtsinger was the lone representative from Ward 7.

The task force spent most of last year examining ways to mitigate parking shortages in some parts of the District and to balance competing residential, commercial and commuter uses for on-street parking. The panel’s report, completed last December and made public today by the mayor, recommends adoption of the following "guiding principles" for the D.C. government’s parking policy:

• Prioritizing parking in residential areas for residents;
• Prioritizing customer parking in commercial areas to promote and facilitate commerce;
• Introducing demand-based pricing strategies
• Ensuring the safety of pedestrians, motorists and parking enforcement personnel
• Improving tracking mechanisms of localized parking demand.

According to the report, the District has approximately 400,000 parking spaces, with the majority requiring parallel parking on the street. About 16,000 of those spaces have parking meters and about 140,000 are located in parking lots and parking garages, primarily located in the downtown central business district.

The report also notes that 215,000 motor vehicles are registered in the District, of which 197,000 are non-commercial vehicles registered for personal use. The report estimates that an additional 200,000 vehicles enter the District during morning rush hour.

"Compared to both the country and other major cities, the District has a high percentage of households without a car. …The average number of motor vehicles per household in the District is 0.89, almost half of the national average of 1.69," the report says.

Thirty-seven percent of D.C. households do not own a car, according to 2000 Census data noted in the report. Forty-three percent of the District’s 249,000 households have only one car, 16 percent have two cars and only four percent have three or more cars.