The Post has a piece about last night's community meeting assessing the first 30 days of the new
Performance Parking plan that restricts curbside parking in Near Southeast, Southwest, and southern Capitol Hill, so I get to skip the basic roundup (yay!); there were also reporters from other outlets there, so I'll link to those as they appear, though the ABC7 report is so full of errors that I will pretend I didn't see it. I'll just hit a few points that stood out for me (keeping in mind that my focus is south of the freeway):
* Some people don't like it, some people do. But I guess you want to know more than that.
* It sounds like the midnight end time for the restrictions will be gone within a few weeks--it's just a question of where they move it to (9:30 seemed to be the number that Tommy Wells came back to a number of times). It sounds like they're already making that move along Pennsylvania Avenue and Barracks Row, after the restaurant and bar owners reported a massive drop in their business in the past month. (On the other hand, businesses with primarily daytime traffic, such as Moto Photo, say that their numbers have improved with the new restrictions, since turnover of spaces is improving; apparently the double-parking has dropped off a lot, too.) Because the specifics of the plan weren't written into the legislation (leaving it up to the Mayor), changes can be made on the fly, without having to go back to the council.
* A lot of people want the restrictions to only be in effect on event days (ballgames, concerts, etc.), though there was then some consternation about how people would *know* it's an event day. Beyond that, Tommy explained a number of times that this plan isn't just about baseball, it's about trying to get ahead of the massive influx of visitors and development in the area over the next few years, and having strategies in place to prevent these neighborhoods from going the way of Adams Morgan or Georgetown. But, when people see that a number of the Nats parking lots are less than full during games, they feel that the entire parking plan is a "solution in search of a problem."
* Even though the signs say that restrictions are enforced starting at 7:30 am seven days a week, the director of DPW said that Sunday enforcement begins at 1 pm. Churches have been given a number of visitor parking passes, and the long-simmering battle between churches and residents over parking was a big undercurrent at this meeting. Tommy says he will meet with every church and its surrounding neighbors to hammer out ways for problems to be addressed.
* A lot of
Capitol Hill Tower folks were at the meeting, but I've learned my lesson and will say little about their parking issues (since I get sniped at no matter what I say). As with most multi-unit residential buildings in the city, CHT residents do not get residential parking permits to allow them to park on streets. They do have an underground garage, but there is a battle between some residents and the building's developer over how the garage is being handled. Some have now been given visitor parking passes to allow them to park on nearby streets.
* Tommy says the parking lot under the freeway at 8th Street should be available for public parking by the end of the summer. (I will file this in my large I'll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It folder.) And he's definitely eyeing the little-used "W" surface lot at the
old Capper Seniors site at 7th and M as perhaps employee parking for Barracks Row, though no specifics were mentioned.