Free parking, especially by non-DC residents, is a waste of precious public assets

I am way behind blogistically... and maybe I'll catch up. Today I left the house without a camera. Always a bad move...

Anyway, coming back from the New York Avenue Metro Station just now (bikeless also...) I decided to survey the cars parked on the east side of 2nd Street/Delaware Avenue NE between K and M Streets--where there are no parking meters!!!!! so anybody parking gets to use the public space for free!

1000 block (between K and L)

Maryland cars -- 12
Virginia cars -- 0
DC cars -- 4
empty spaces -- 2

(Note that on the west side of this block, where the spots are individually metered, there were 8 cars parked. The meters allow for four hours of parking.)

1100 block (between L and M)

Maryland cars -- 19
Virginia cars -- 4
DC cars -- 5
empty spaces -- 2

This was at 1:45 p.m.

I know that the 1000 block will soon enough be under construction, but there is no reason to not capture revenue from this wasteful use of public space in the meantime -- as well as to charge the developer for the loss of income (as is what happened with Dreyfus when their construction traffic management plan ended up removing parking meters from much of 2nd Street NE).

And with the new style parking meters, which have one central parking meter machine per block, the cost to outfit a block for parking must be much less than providing individually metered spaces.



Index Keywords: parking; public-assets