Ward 6 Residential Parking Protection Pilot Act of 2009

From the Tommy Wells Blogweb site
This week, Councilmember Wells introduced the Ward 6 Residential Parking Protection Pilot Act of 2009.

This bill is designed to enhance residential parking protections by providing tools DDOT can use to prioritize parking for DC residents in our residential neighborhoods.

Many residents already experience incredibly tight on-street parking. A lot of blocks around commercial corridors suffer overflow from late-night patrons taking up valuable on-street parking on residential streets (often times doing so to avoid meters by taking advantage of "free" parking).

As many in our Ward know, last year the Council gave DDOT new authority in the residential neighborhoods around the commercial corridors on Capitol Hill and near National Park. Through that new authority, DDOT was allowed to enhance residential parking protections in several ways, including extending Residential Parking Permit (RPP) protections later into the evening; making one side of the block RPP-only; and providing Visitor Parking passes to RPP households so guests or caregivers were able to visit.

This type of flexibility allows DDOT to work with the neighborhood and ANCs to effectively address issues in individual neighborhoods so that it can create the protections that best fit each neighborhood’s needs. In other words, some neighborhoods need more help than others and this puts tools in the DDOT toolbox to help.

The Ward 6 Residential Parking Protection Pilot Act of 2009 seeks to bring these tools beyond the ballpark and commercial corridors and share them with all of Ward 6. The bill would allow DDOT to work with the community to:

1) designate one side of the street "zone 6 permit holders only" to help prioritize and protect residential parking (the other side of the street would remain RPP;

2) expand the Visitor Parking Pass program to all eligible blocks in Ward 6; and

3) allow RPP hours to be extended as late as 12:00 am on blocks where fifty-one percent of the households request an extension.

The bill also includes an additional measure designed to help alleviate the increased parking congestion on our residential streets. Currently, each one-year RPP permit is $15. Under the Ward 6 Residential Parking Protection Pilot Act of 2009, the first permit per household remains at just $15 per year; a second permit in the same household would be $50 annually, and any additional permits after the first two would be charged $100 per year.