Washington Post: D.C. implementing parking rules to limit visitor spots, discourage driving
District officials are reserving thousands of on-street parking spaces for residents on weekdays in the city’s most crowded neighborhoods, part of an aggressive effort to limit spots for visitors.
The restrictions are a slice of a city strategy to promote bicycling and mass transit while increasing the odds that residents can find parking. The changes, which could affect as many as 10,000 spaces, come as the city eliminates some on-street parking to make room for bicycle lanes and prepares to set aside hundreds of meters for the disabled.
If they really wanted to help residents, they would leave the current system alone during the day, and implement one side residents only at night.
During the day, residential zones in DC are currently 2 hour parking for the entire zone (which correspond to the 8 wards of DC, roughly), with an exemption for those with a residential permit for that zone. During the day, I personally don't have a problem with residential parking areas being used as overflow parking for business districts, because many residents leave the neighborhoods with their cars to commute to work,so in many areas, there are available spaces. And DC's residential parking is far more friendly than most other area jurisdictions, which ban all non-resident parking during the day. Plus for people actually visiting residents (as opposed to just visiting the neighborhood), each resident gets one guest pass plus they can get as many temporary ones as they want from the nearest police station. I say leave those spots alone for people patronizing neighborhood businesses, deliveries, and short term visitors, but still discouraging all day commuter parking on residential streets with time limits for non-residents.
But at night when all the residents come home from work, this is when parking is a problem in many neighborhoods, and also when DC has no parking restrictions on most residential streets! It is tolerable Monday to Thursday nights, not that good on Sunday nights (I suppose a lot of residents have overnight visitors that don't leave until the next morning), and awful on Friday and Saturday nights when you have people coming in from the suburbs for the nightlife. This is when it would be really nice to have one side reserved for residents (and their guests with a proper permit).
Our neighborhood is bad all weekend, not just in the evenings, because people come in to visit a tourist attraction in the neighborhood that has pay parking...but they don't want to pay for it, so they just use up all the residential spots. I did the street parking game for 4 years, now I pay big bucks for a garage spot in my building so I can come and go as I please.