Accessory dwelling units

The Baltimore Sun has an op-ed on adding housing units to extant places, "Not just for mother-in-law."

For me, it's particularly interesting because the lead author is Patrick Hare. A former planner for Montgomery County, Pat lived in Brookland for many years. An op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post in the late 1980s set the stage for what is now finally close to fruition, the Metropolitan Branch Trail, a bicycle and walking trail that will parallel the Metropolitan Branch railroad tracks from Silver Spring (but not exactly through Takoma due to some DC nimbyism there) to Union Station.

Pat wrote another op-ed in the early 1990s, which espoused that DC should adopt HOV-2 requirements during rush hours on arterial streets used as commuting routes--streets such as Michigan Avenue or Rhode Island Avenue or Monroe Street NE or North Capitol Street--in order to encourage more optimal mobility and reduce congestion. What this means is that cars would have to have at least two occupants in order to use the road as a through street.

While the Met Branch Trail is close to completion, there has been limited to no consideration of the adoption of HOV requirements on non-highway streets within Washington, DC. (After reading the op-ed while doing some research, I wrote about it and added it to my 2008 Transportation wish list, and it will be in the forthcoming 2009 version as well.)

Locally, Alexandria has an HOV-2 requirement during rush hour on Washington Blvd. (going north, in the morning) and on Route 1 (going south, in the evening).

Anyway, adding housing units to extant places, either as English basements, accessory apartments, and units in carriage houses/alley dwellings needs to be considered as a way to maintain a greater diversity of housing types, allowing for a greater economic diversity of residents, more tax revenue for localities, and more residents able to support local business districts, transit systems, and to provide more positive activity and eyes on the streets (especially in the interiors of blocks).

Note that it has taken 20+ years for the Met Branch Trail...