parking woes/rant

Submitted by emniki t3_y92m79 in washingtondc

I live in an apartment building in Eckington/NoMa and am getting increasingly annoyed with the parking situation. When I moved in this summer, there was plenty of street parking in the neighborhood, and now they seem to be rezoning it so that it’s all resident/2 hour parking, which makes it almost impossible to park now and has made street sweeping days a nightmare. Parking enforcement/ticketing is insanely overzealous in the neighborhood as well, in my opinion, but whatever.

The issue is that my building’s parking garage is full and there has been a waitlist since I moved in, and there’s also a clause in my lease that building residents are prohibited from getting a DC resident parking permit(???). If the parking garage was available, I’d park there. But it’s not - and now free/available street parking is disappearing. And we’re apparently not allowed to get DC parking permits. Is this normal? Is it just me?

(on mobile, sorry for formatting)

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dcmcg t1_it38eau wrote

Yes that's normal. A lot of new buildings sign agreements prohibiting residents from getting an RPP in order to appease zoning concerns.

Parking is a valuable and finite resource, especially in dense areas like NoMa. It's crazy to me how many people just expect it to be free or cheap.

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yonkssssssssssssss t1_it3anyh wrote

Your best bet is to rent a spot from a private party (or really, sell your car and rent one when public transit doesn’t suffice). And yes it’s normal. You live in a big city, you can’t just assume you can store your property in public spaces for free.

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emniki OP t1_it3h8kz wrote

Yeah, I’m also from New York so I’m pretty familiar with living in a big city. Never had a problem storing my property in a public space there. My question was more about DC zoning changes.

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Appropriate-Ad-4148 t1_it5tv7l wrote

Paying 220$ - 260a month for any one of the garages around there seems relatively cheap compared to NYC rates. That’s your best bet.

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believevv t1_it3fsqp wrote

Getting rid of your car seems like a good option

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lc1138 t1_it5ujr5 wrote

It seems OP has been tricked like many city dwellers that having a car is a necessity. People need to stop buying into this marketing scheme. Nobody needs a car here for daily use unless differently abled

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trash_2008 t1_it69zoh wrote

Depends on the OP’s job. If they are working from home, they can get rid of their car.

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believevv t1_it6zbig wrote

How is working from home the only way they can get rid of their car? DC public transit is the way to commute,especially considering that in NoMa OP is right on the red line

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trash_2008 t1_it737po wrote

I don’t take metro. Use to but I would have to leave so early to not be late. My job requires me to be all over the city and metro is not an option. If OP really needs the car, they can pay for a garage spot.

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believevv t1_it7ccso wrote

Cool. You’re probably in the small minority who works “all over the city.” Most of us have one work site.

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trash_2008 t1_it7j82c wrote

Sometimes I question my profession but then again, I hated sitting at a desk all day.

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Rscaroll t1_it60mq3 wrote

The parking you mentioned being previously un zoned and available without restriction on use..... Can you indicate what the adjacent private property is for those spaces? For example, if it's townhomes, it might be that those residents also had increased diffacaulty parking and petitioned to have their block zones. That's how it is supposed to work but often times residential parking zones are placed against Parks or schools or other non-residential properties. If the previously unzoned parking is adjacent to a park or a school it might not actually be a restricted area and just the signs are up check the RPP database on dc.gov. in areas like Dupont where all of the parks do seem to have residential parking restrictions I believe those we're done with ancs and councils involvement but it really conflicts with the purpose of RPP. As far as your buildings restriction are not getting residents RPP it would seem that your buildings street parking should also not be rpp. If it's commercial on the ground level and metered that's another story though. You might be able to dig through some of the ANC files and find the initial proposals for your building to determine what they actually agreed to with the ANC in terms of parking. I understand that often times DMV does not care about those parking permit limitations and they still issue them. Don't forget you can always throw a car cover on your vehicle and no one will ever look at it or ticket it as long as it's covered

And anyone who would like to chime in about how no one needs a car.. you are welcome to carry my tools and materials for me between my customer jobs and I will happily take your guidance on using WMATA instead of a private vehicle around town.

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emniki OP t1_it8683w wrote

Thank you!! So yeah, apparently the zone starts like 20 feet away from my building. We have like 6 spots right in front that aren’t zoned or metered. Starting from the next block is residential/townhomes, which I get. But around the corner from my building/on the side streets nearby is all non-res/commercial, which was what kind of confused me when the signs went up. On the other side of my building is Alethia Tanner Park which is metered, but that’s whatever.

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Rscaroll t1_it8em93 wrote

I did a street view around the area of the park and if I had to guess the reason you can't get an RPP and the reason there are no RPP restrictions in some areas is probably because no one has petitioned for the RPP. It looks like parking for the area across from the park is is actually 2 hour multi space metered as well, is that still in place and does the multi space meter work? Your neighborhood does not seem to look like the type where the developer agrees with the local ANC and future residents can't get parking passes. Usually there are places like Georgetown or west end where existing residents don't want to lose parking. I don't feel that was the case in eckington prior to recent development but I could be wrong.

Can you share the verbatim text in your lease that prohibits getting a parking permit? Honestly I think you may just fill out the petition to zone the block for RPP which will normally allow you to get an RPP. Once you have the petition filled out someone will work with DDOT and at that point can ask that they zone all of the curb space adjacent to the building as RPP not just the side where everybody's Street address is. There are a lot of funny parking signs there - MPD, Fire Lane, Fire Marshall, etc. They look like generic signs that a developer put up for the sake of putting up a sign. Or for selling parking garage spaces.

I don't think you will get much push back for zoning the block for RPP your building contributes aot of curb space to the zone and ther really isn't any reason for other existing neighbors to not want that zoned RPP - unless the goal is parking garage revenue by developer but they have accomplished that goal already it seems.

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Rscaroll t1_it9lfq8 wrote

Eckington, between Q and Quincy is all RPP zoned. If thats your address on your ID you should qualify for the RPP. No other streets in that area are RPP zoned, Q, harry thomas, all unzoned, uncommercial areas.

When you start the petition for the RPP block print out a petition to stop street sweeping while you are at it. Prevents the weekly tickets and moving cars and tickets and fines when you know they rarely if ever come by and sweep anyways.

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TheRealSlimLady88 t1_it7cml1 wrote

Not sure if the zoning is changing in this area since I moved, but as of last year, free parking was still available near McKinley HS. I used to park at 3rd and S NE area with no restriction signs - hope it's still available for you

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emniki OP t1_it85563 wrote

Unfortunately that’s pretty much where I’ve been running into issues! I used to have no problem there either.

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