Councilmember Tommy Wells introduced the “Residential Overnight Parking Enhancement Amendment Act of 2010” to clarify and create additional overnight parking on residential blocks.
“I will continue to push for aggressive growth of the city’s alternative transportation that does not rely on cars, but the fact is that I hear from families, seniors, and other residents who cannot find on-street parking near their homes and don’t feel safe walking several blocks from their car to their front door late at night,” stated Councilmember Wells.
With the proposed legislation, there will be potentially four new spaces available to residents for overnight parking on RPP zoned blocks. The law would allow, between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. – hours where there is considerably less vehicular and pedestrian traffic – residents with a valid RPP sticker to park in the spaces at the ends of the block, within ten feet of the intersection. The proposal also allows the Department of Transportation to prohibit these end-of-block parking spaces if it is determined unsafe or creates hazards such as limiting access for emergency vehicles. Parking would continue to be prohibited that blocks fire hydrants, crosswalks and other violations.
In his comments, Councilmember Wells described the proposal as part of his ongoing efforts to better manage the limited resource of on-street parking to best meet the demands to benefit residents.
Readers have left 9 comments.
(1) Untitled
2010-01-19 12:41:17
thank you! this is sorely needed.
(2) Untitled
2010-01-19 15:42:16
Thank you for initiating this bill. When there isn't any parking on my street I often have to park several blocks away which isn't safe late at night. Having the ability for residents with zone 6 parking permits to park in the no parking zones will help alleviate some of the security risks we currently face.
(3) Untitled
2010-01-19 16:45:18
Hurray, some relief may be in sight.
(4) Untitled
2010-01-19 18:18:02
These spaces are often used now... and no tickets are issued- esp.by folks with non DC tags
(5) Untitled
2010-01-19 19:27:21
Hello,
I think this is a good idea but I'm not sure it will help those residents that live in areas that are affected by the new commercial growth in our neighborhood. There are major problems with residential parting on the blocks direcetly adjacent to H Street. How will we benefit from this?
(6) Untitled
2010-01-20 08:54:56
To Judith -- Enforcement is very inconsistent. Cars are ticketed in some places, but not others. This bill will clarify the confusion.
To Guest User 19:27:21 -- The proposal could allow up to 4 vehicles, with a valid RPP sticker, to park overnight at the ends of the blocks. Requiring the RPP sticker is important so that this is geared to help residents, not visitors.
(7) Untitled
2010-01-21 09:17:57
I support this bill as parking far from your home becomes an issue of safety. I also believe there should be some controls placed on the number of cars per household. For example, my neighbor has 4 large vehicles (2 of which never moves) which he strategically parks as to save space in the event he moves one vehicle. I believe that if a family has more than two cars per household they should pay more for the third car to be registration and zone parking. The city is becoming more crowded each year and a parking bill is not going to change the amount of cars in the city. DC has an excellent public transportation system and we should try to encourage its use. This will make DC a healthy place to live and work.
(8) Untitled
2010-01-28 18:05:05
This is somewhat of a good idea, but I would like to know what happened to the visitor parking passes that were sent to us in SW? The city changed all of the parking signs, now, no-one can visit you because there is no parking on the street at any time. If you are not going to distribute the passes then change the parking regulations back to as they were pre-baseball stadium. The only reason they were really changed was to try to extract more money from parking tickets not to help residents, because the stadium is somewhat of a walk from my street (G St Sw). Most if not all baseball patrons would never park that far away. You should either give out the visitor passes or change the parking back.
(9) Untitled
2010-02-05 19:38:31
too many cars on every block. don't let a household have more than 2 cars. Try some innovative parking styles. RPP only parking, lots of guest passes when we have guests in our home. Humanize the city!
Tommy Blog 
