Another thought about parking from a blogreader

A comment from blogreader Steve Morris:

Your item about San Fran's consideration of reducing the amount of parking in residential buildings to promote transit, walking, and minimize traffic problems, reminded me that many years ago similar restrictions were put in place in the City of London (the financial district of London) for office buildings.

The Greater London Council, I believe it was, realized that continuing to build large parking areas under the City's office buildings undermined efforts to increase ridership on the Tube and contributed to London's severe traffic congestion. I often wonder how long it will take DC to figure that lesson out. Particularly as the east end of downtown fills up and adjoining sections like NoMa get built up--the road network is going to be completely overwhelmed.

The issue isn't so much the broader road network as much as it is what I think of the choke points--small streets and blocks, odd small places where roads converge, quick lights, etc. Think of how First Street NE heading north dead ends onto Florida Avenue, and how people try to turn left from Florida onto O Street, and right from O Street onto Florida. I once spent 15 minutes on a 90s bus covering the distance from North Capitol Street to New York Avenue. Frustrating.

Such bottlenecks will get much worse as the number of cars in the area continues to climb.

Index Keywords: parking; zoning; car-culture