The DC USA garage will cost DC about $28

$2.8 million a year, if it continues at the rate it did in March. Each of the 1,015 spaces is in use a little less than 2 hours each day.

When the garage opened, I ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the economics. By my estimate, the garage would pay for itself if it earns $3,441 per space per year.

Based on statistics for March, the garage earned an average of $1,901 per day. Total. That’s $1.87 per space per day, meaning that most spaces are generally occupied for about 1-2 hours per day.

$1.87 per day is $683.77 per year, for a loss to the DC government of $2,527 a year or about $28 $2.8 million in total.

About 1,250 total cars used the garage each day on weekends and about 650 used it each weekday. The stats don’t say how full the garage gets at its peak, but it’s clear that most of the garage is going empty most of the time despite the extremely cheap rates.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.