Perhaps you’re single and drive every day. Perhaps you have three kids to haul around, and you take Metro or Metrobus everywhere. Or, more likely, the reverse is true. Everyone has different transportation needs, and these needs can change throughout your lifespan.
When DC’s current zoning regulations went into effect in 1958, planners assumed that everyone would use a car to get around, and set parking requirements for developers accordingly. The proposed rewrite of DC zoning laws creates “transit zones” that did not exist in 1958. And, it would reduce and even eliminate some on-site parking requirements for large commercial and residential buildings within these transit zones.
Is the DC Office of Planning (OP) on the right track? Forest Hills Connection would like to learn more about transit and motor vehicle usage in this and adjacent neighborhoods. Please click here to take our survey. We’ll publish the results.
Rhea Smith says
I strongly oppose this rewrite. Parking along the Connecticut Avenue corridor and on the sides streets along that corridor is already a problem. If it is made even more difficult, people with cars will do their shopping in the suburbs where parking is readily available. The District desperately needs the sales tax revenues that it would loose.
William says
Parking and traffic are already a problem. If you add more parking, you will add more traffic. As others have noted, we have had a 70 year experiment in auto-centric planning and mobility. This is a blip on the course of human evolution that needs to end. No one is taking away your car, or your ability to drive. However, we need to use our finite resources (ie public space) in a more efficient manner that will enable more people to live, work, play and travel to get there.
More people can ride buses and metro, share cars and bikes than use single occupancy vehicles. The thriving establishments are the ones in transit zones that are supported by density of potential clients and customers. Our neighborhood of single family homes is precious and needs to stay that way, but we also need to adapt our city to the needs of the future. That future will generally not be focused on single family houses and single occupancy vehicles.
Lore says
I also oppose this re-write. I lived in one of the Connecticut Ave. buildings when I first moved to DC. I paid for garage parking, but there were not enough spots available for residents who wanted them, and others just parked on the street. Now, we are in a single famiily home, and one of us drives and one of us metro’s. if our street gets more crowded, we will have no place to park, which is difficult with a young family. We would then push to have the alley behind our house paved (eliminating grass), and would need to spend a great deal of money and take out green space from our backyard to pave a spot. In DC, generally, people who need to drive drive, and people who can Metro do so — and letting developers not provide parking won’t change that, but will just push the people who need to drive on the streets.