DC to charge big vehicles more money for registration: something similarly suggested in a neighborhood planning initiative more than 20 years ago

 When Mayor Williams was elected, he revived urban planning (although it has since degraded) including defining the city in terms of geographical "clusters" and doing action plans for each.  The process was celebrated in national planning circles, but didn't accomplish much when it comes down to it.

Each plan's vision was dependent on the planners and the residents and how visionary they were.  Plus the stated foundation of the approach--that you would direct how the various city agencies spent money in your cluster--was fatuous.  There wasn't much in the way of programmable money independent of existing programs.

SmartCars were great for cities.  But when people buy just one car they tend to buy a bigger vehicle, to accomplish more of their perceived needs.

Anyway, our cluster in the H Street neighborhood was the first one to pilot the approach.  One of the things people came up with (not me!) was charging more for residential parking permits based on the size (and I presume) number of vehicles per household.

That never came to pass.

Although about 20 years later, it seems that Councilmember Cheh is heralding a similar policy that is soon to be enacted ("DC drivers could soon pay a lot more to register big trucks, SUVs," WTOP). From the article:

The District will include new costs for registering a vehicle, and for cars that are more than 6,000 pounds, that annual fee will be $500 — that’s up from $155.... 

The cost to register cars that weigh between 3,500 and 4,999 pounds will go from $115 to $175, and cars between 5,000 and 5,999 pounds will cost $250 each year — that’s $95 more than current rates. 

Cars that weigh 3,499 pounds or less will still cost $72, when it is time to renew the registration. 

The cost of registering commercial vehicles will also go up, with trucks weighing more than 7,000 pounds paying $500 and those more than 10,000 pounds paying $700 and up. 

The increase in registration costs will bring in an additional $2.3 million to the city each year, which Cheh said will be used for the DC Safe Routes to School Program, which is aimed at improving safety for students who walk and bike to school. 

Cheh said there is a provision that will help owners of electric vehicles be able to subtract 1,000 pounds from the manufacturer’s shipping weight, when figuring out how much a car’s registration fee will be. 

According to Bloomberg, this is a first-of-its-kind effort by a local government to address “truck bloat,” a term used to label the rise of bigger trucks and SUVs on the streets. Once signed by the mayor, the new rates would take effect in October.

What's the point of citizen planning initiatives, if the good ideas never get captured, codified, and integrated in law and regulations?

And so it takes more than 20 years for a good idea to get enacted, completely independently.