Reasons to Be Car Free in DC: Now Accepting Plastic

New credit card reading meters

Booya. Yeah. You can now pay for on street parking with a credit card. Plastic. Sounds like a nice option, but this just confirms that parking in DC has moved beyond quarters, dimes and nickels. The most forward thinking agency in our fair city, DDOT, has  floated quite a few ideas to make street parking faster and more convenient for drivers. Multi-space meters, pay by phone meters and at some point in the future, in car metering will all part of the parking management system. 

Another option is pay by credit card. As of today most streets downtown require $2.00 per hour for parking. That's 7 and 1/2 minuets per quarter. In performance parking zones (near Nationals Park and DCUSA for example) the rates are variable and can go much higher. The mulit space meters readily accept credit cards and if you are using the rare pay by phone meters, your phone number is linked to your credit card per sign up. Having this option does make some sense. Now that tolls can also be paid without coins, having 20 quarters in your glove box just for parking seems unrealistic and unnecessary (that's 2 and 1/2 hours, btw).  

Now individual space meters are getting the credit card makeover. The city argues that it's good for businesses, getting customers in and out, deterring all day parking. But man, who knew. A sign of the times if there ever was one. Pulling out the plastic for curb side parking. And you still have to parallel park that thing yourself.

More Reasons to Be Car Free in DC.

BID Takes Direct Aim at City Parking Meters

Adams Morgan Partnership BID is reaching out to visitors in quite a unique way. One of the primary issues in the bustling neighborhood is parking. Days, nights, weekends, holidays, whenever, parking will always be an issue in Adams Morgan.

So, the Partnership figured it should go directly to parkers. Affixed to parking meters all along Columbia Road are stickers advising drivers not to park on the street and instead park in a private garage on Champlain Street, one block off the main strip. The private garage can be accessed through a curb cut on 18th Street and is a busy lot on the weekends.

The sticker features a stop sign and red lettering which reads "Don't feed this meter!" at the top. The rest of the text goes on to explain why you should park in the private garage and how to get the cheaper hourly rate. You have to get validated from a business and the promotion is only good until 5:00PM daily.

The Partnership BID has also posted fliers about parking on the community board at 18th and Columbia.

Kind of torn on this one. Obviously the BID has the incentive to do whatever it can to alleviate the parking issue and make it easier for potential customers to reach merchants. But to place the stickers directly on the city meters might go too far. The sticker names the owner of the garage twice. So, in this way it is sort of an advertisement. However, in the corner it is made clear that the sticker was "Bought to you by" and shows the Adams Morgan Partnership logo.

Fair or foul?

Multi Space Meters in Use

We're inching our way towards parking sanity. Something like that, yea. The solar powered multi-space parking meters have hit Mount Pleasant Street and are in operation. They will allow more cars to park on the commercial strip and make feeding the meter and extending your stay less convenient. Hopefully that will lead to increased turnover and give businesses a small boost. Most of the neighborhood is still on two-hour, Zone One parking, however. Very few unzoned streets left at this point.

Multi Space Meters for Mount Pleasant

Looks like the Mount Pleasant parking scene is going the way of Adams Morgan and Penn Quarter. Solar powered multi space meters are being installed all along the commercial strip. The green parking posts will replace the old meters, which allowed for only one car per meter. The new multi space meters allow as many cars hat can fill a block's worth of curb space. They accept coins (no pennies) and credit/debit cards. Take the receipt you get after payment and place it in the front window, left side of your dashboard. No word if the double parkers will make use of the extra spaces.

Park Road Under Major Construction

As part of a year+ long project that affects Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights, Park Road is under major construction. The always busy street is even more congested from 14th Street NW to Mt Pleasant St NW as of last month. There is one west bound travel lane between 16th & Mt P Streets and reduced sidewalk space.

The utility work is being done in conjunction with the Columbia Heights Street Scape. When finished, the road will have a completely new serface, markings and both north and south sidewalks will be widened. The south sidewalk is particularly in need of widening. Expect at least one sidewalk to be completely open at any given time along the route.

Reasons to Be Car Free in DC #8: The Real Pink Slip

To be honest I have no idea how much parking tickets are in DC! I have never gotten one. When I delivered food for a restaurant in my hometown, I collected about 20 tickets over 3 years. Since parking in a loading zone or no parking zone in Richmond was only $12, my employer paid many of the tickets. Otherwise, I paid out of my tips. Not so bad and just a danger of the job. Eventually though, I got towed.

At that time Richmond city didn't boot cars, they took towed cars to a private lot in one of the worst neighborhoods. It was on the edge of the city and I'm pretty sure blocks away form a bus line. The owners of the lot were surly and kept irregular hours which weren't posted. They charged more to pay with a credit card and each day your car sat on the lot, the fee increased. A compete nightmare! However it taught me to not get tickets and pay them promptly when I did get them. I paid in hard earned cash and considered the tow lot to be one of the greatest rackets in the city.

DC has the boot, but not having a car, I honestly, and thankfully have no frame of reference how large of a price one pays for breaking parking laws here. How much are tickets? How much of a beast is that wheel boot? I'm curious.

Reasons to Be Car Free in DC #5: Parking

Oh, about a year and a half ago I went to check out the Lot 33 condos on Euclid Street. I wasn't thinking of moving away from Mount Pleasant, just wanted to see what $400,000-$500,000 could get me and re-convince myself that I had laughably few options for owning anything at this point in my life. Lot 33 is on Euclid near 17th Street. You can walk to Malcolm X Park, Harris Teeter, the Euclid Market corner store, Adams Morgan, and U Street is just down the Hill. The unit I looked at had hard wood floors, granite splashbacks and killer views...of the apartments next door. I kid, it was very nice. A little sterile, but yea, all the newness a newness-liking buyer could ask for.

One great perk in particular, off street parking. Yes, you can pull in to the street level garage next to the front door. The entrance is right on Euclid Street. The condo units actually sit above the garage so the 1st floor is really the second level. Anyway, the spaces were for sale; for $40,000 a piece! Yes, the $450,000 unit I saw could be complete with a parking space for nearly 10% of the purchase price. I'm sure many of the cars in the spaces aren't even worth $40,000. My last car was worth, like 5% of that. Please, if anyone thinks an underground parking space is worth $40,000 please make the justification. I'm open to all opinions, convince me.

I was going to write about how hard it is to find a space on the street, but I think the forbidding price of secured parking counts too. It's reason #5 to be car free in DC.