Once again, when you ask the wrong question, parking is always the answer

(Not being skilled at dubbing, I'd really like to dub the "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" line from the Brady Bunch as "parking, parking, parking.)

There are usually two answers provided by politicians to concerns raised by merchants in commercial districts about their real or perceived lack of business:

- provide a shuttle/circulator type bus service and/or
- build a parking structure.

Now, these aren't necessarily bad strategies, depending on the context BUT it's dependent on knowing what the deal really is with the commercial district. Without doing an in-depth commercial district revitalization study including a "market" study and interviews (quantitative and qualitative), you don't really know what is going on.

For example, the most fundamental question is, exactly, what is the retail trade area (the geographic area) from which Cleveland Park "retail" draws its customers? Does the RTA vary for retail vs. restaurant and food? How do people get to the RTA to shop? Is the retail mix offered by the commercial district adequate enough to meet the various retail needs and interests of consumers? etc.

And, which no merchant likes to ask, is the quality of the offer equal to the task of meeting the needs and demands of consumers? A lot of time, the answer is no...

(If you like reading studies from elsewhere for insight into your own situation, I highly recommend my analysis of how to plan the retail and entertainment mix in a commercial district by daypart, which is embedded in this study I did for Cambridge, Maryland, A Commercial District Revitalization Framework Plan for Downtown Cambridge, Maryland. It's a subtle and intricate approach that no one is doing and deserves to be written up as a journal article.)

Instead, I can't think of a merchant in DC (well, there is one person*) that I haven't heard say that the most important problem that they need to address is lack of parking. Of course, in our region, the automobile-dependent places such as Bethesda and Silver Spring are so good at providing municipal parking structures often with free parking at night, that as a result most every merchant everywhere else (ranging from Warren Love of CakeLove who believes that a public parking structure where the Reeves Building is located would enable more people to buy his overpriced cakes, or the Capitol Hill restauranteur--now defunct--who believed that parking should have been allowed on the Eastern Market Metro site, etc.) believes that they need more parking.

What people don't understand is that except for work trips, unless you live close in, in a place like Montgomery County, you have to drive to get anywhere, so providing parking is a necessity, if traditional commercial districts are to be competitive with shopping malls.

But the suburban experience isn't necessarily relevant to the urban/center city experience, where more people live more densely, and often walk or take transit (or even bicycle) to local commercial districts.

In response to this continual drumbeat, there are proposals to put in massive amounts of parking at Eastern Market (there is a need there for some parking, but mostly the need is for systematic transportation management and for parking wayfinding systems) and other places--despite the massive failure of the parking structure at Columbia Heights ("At Columbia Heights Mall, So Much Parking, So Little Need " from the Post).

The latest proposal is for Cleveland Park, according to this blog entry, "Parking garage not the answer for Cleveland Park," in GGW. Apparently, Councilmember Cheh, who normally favors "smart growth" recommends a parking structure there.

Here was my response to that entry:

Sadly, the real issue is about the retail. But you're all talking** about the parking garage proposal. As I pointed out on this blog about 17th Street a year or two ago when parking-retail was discussed, the real issue is the nature of the retail district and the retail trade area and then how people get to the RTA. (** Actually some of the people did discuss the retail issues more thoroughly.)

But I wrote about the Cleveland Park retail issue too:

#1 -- Cleveland Park Retail: My off-hand evaluation, the rents are too high

#2 -- Commercial retail rents #2

Obviously, 17th Street/Dupont Circle is different from Cleveland Park. As a "regional" retail district in mid-nw, probably a bunch of people drive to Cleveland Park (it may function comparable to how Bethesda functions for Montgomery County as a major specialty retail and primary restaurant destination), but you need to do a market study/commercial district revitalization framework plan to figure stuff out. It can be reasonable from a commercial district revitalization standpoint to add parking (EVEN THOUGH I HATE TO SAY IT). However, again, I recommend the creation of transportation management districts and the management of all modes rather than a focus on parking.

And this thread also proves that I am making no headway at all in explaining the difference between what people call "Circulators" the DC Circulator service and what I call tertiary transit network service potential within DC:

DC Tertiary Transit Network: intra-neighborhood bus services; private shuttle services (i.e., Washington Hospital Center to/from Brookland Metro, university shuttle services, etc.). This proposed tier of service would be comprised of an intra-neighborhood transit service that could be free (depending on monies provided separately by DC), and oriented to getting people to and from within a neighborhood, to main transit lines and stations without having to drive, and including delivery of goods and services from local commercial districts. The Tempe Orbit bus system in Tempe, Arizona is one model for this type of mobility option.

A circulator in mid-nw could support the Woodley Park and Cleveland Park commercial districts (maybe the stuff by the Cathedral too), but it should stay up in mid-nw and never ever ever go south of Calvert Street.

It should be a "neighborhood" circulator. It would probably be best to run it only certain times of the day, and it could be used "RideOn" style to get people to the subway stations in the morning and back home from the subway stations in the evening.

But as long as you focus on the pretty red buses without thinking through the service profile, you're missing the point.

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* Actually, the guy who owns Marvelous Market at 7th and C Streets SE immediately across from the Eastern Market favors keeping 7th Street closed on weekends to build the festival atmosphere, at the cost of some parking. He's about the only merchant I can think of who understands context and place and mobility.