Bill Myers misses the real story about parking around Judiciary Square

which is that police officers think they should be able to park their private vehicles for free.

Instead, we get this, "Cops decry parking tickets during court visits" in the Examiner and officers clamoring for a parking lot (it costs upwards of $30,000 per space to build a parking structure, or do officers want some buildings torn down so they can have a surface parking lot?)

My response to the article:

1. Where do DC police officers...
2. Many of whom live in the suburbs,
3. and drive their automobiles to the Courts
4. expecting free parking
5. even though the Courts are located downtown in a densely developed area where there is only a limited amount of parking available on-street to begin with,
6. (although there is some paid parking available nearby in underground parking structures)
7. despite the fact that the Courts are located two blocks away from either the Judiciary Square (red) and Archives (yellow/green) subway stations
8. and when they don't get free parking, or tickets because they are parked illegally
9. they whine
10. and expect the city to build them free parking lots or parking structures.

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1. Me, I would never expect to be able to drive to downtown and park for free--let alone find parking. Instead, I would take public transit.

2. Note that whenever our household gets phone calls asking for donations to the Fraternal Order of Police I inform the caller that we disagree with many of the positions expressed by Kristopher Baumann, the leader of the FOP (the police officers union), as expressed in the local media and therefore aren't willing to make donations.

3. This is another illustration of how every DC government agency should be required to do transportation demand management planning, focused on reducing the number of automobile trips made by people coming to work.

Overview of Judiciary Square area, Downtown DC. Indiana Avenue is on the top of the photo. Probably, this is a Historic American Building Survey photo from the early 1970s. The parking lot shown in the bottom middle of the photo is now an office building for the local field office for the FBI.