As society’s view of the shape of our communities and the role of our streets has shifted, so have the views of our elected officials. In the 1920s, a public debate over the role of cars dedicated streets to cars alone. Communities passed laws mandating the suburban form of development. Today, we’re reevaluating those decisions and their negative consequences, and with varying degrees of speed, our representatives are coming along for the ride.

Some, like Councilmembers Tommy Wells, Mary Cheh and Congressman Earl Blumenauer, lead the pack, but the average representative’s views typically lag public opinion by a few years. Different communities sit at different points along this continuum as well. Cleveland Park seems more ready for walkable development at a major corner than is Tenleytown. H Street is eager for new commercial development, while Brookland is torn.

Exemplifying the uncertainty between 20th and 21st century urban views is Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. Thomas recognizes the value of adding housing and retail opportunities next to our Metro stations, and supported the Brookland Small Area Plan despite fierce lobbying from some residents. At the same time, he travels by car, and still thinks about public space from a cars first standpoint. For example, he jokingly chided Mayor Fenty for choosing a smaller car over a muscular SUV.

On Tuesday, Thomas introduced a bill to provide specific tax breaks for gas stations, including to encourage the development of more. After all, the number of stations has plummeted almost 50% in recent years. Shouldn’t our public policy help fight that trend? It sounded appealing enough at first that Councilmembers Mary Cheh (Ward 3), Phil Mendelson (at-large), Jim Graham (Ward 1), Jack Evans (Ward 2), and Yvette Alexander (Ward 7) signed on as co-sponsors.

However, this is actually very bad policy. It’s not bad because we ought to squeeze all gas stations out of the District in an effort to force people to stop driving, as some hilariously allege when talking about this blog’s views. Instead, it’s bad because real market trends are driving the decline. People are driving less, which means we need fewer stations. Land in DC is becoming more valuable, making a mixed-use retail and condo development more appealing. Those are good trends for the city, and if the economy is moving in that direction, the last thing DC should do is spend money to swim against the tide and subsidize the stations.

Richard Layman, Ryan Avent, and Matthew Yglesias quickly jumped to criticize the bill. Plus, Avent pointed out, there are still plenty of stations. Gas prices here are still lower than in much of Montgomery County. We’ve lost some stations, but there’s no sign of a crippling gas shortage. Stations in DC rarely seem crowded. The supply seems to meet the demand just fine. Are people really traveling outside DC to buy gas in huge numbers?

There is one unfortunate reason for keeping gas stations: the federal government allocates transportation spending proportional to the gas tax revenue collected by each state. That creates a perverse incentive for jurisdictions near state lines, like DC, to sell as much gas as possible. Congress ought to revise this formula in the upcoming transportation bill, to allocate based on actual driving total multimodal miles traveled or some better formula (good point, Ryan) rather than gas sales.

That Thomas bill received the most press, but is actually not the only pro-car-subsidy bill Thomas introduced Tuesday. He also submitted the Recreation Center and Public Library Municipal Parking Pilot Program Act of 2009, which would call on the Mayor to develop a plan for “municipal parking structures” at DC parks and libraries, including an analysis of costs and benefits, safety, “potential increase in public transportation”, and surrounding jurisdictions’ experiences. Profits from such structures would add to the parks or libraries budgets.

It’s unlikely that such structures would make money, and even more unlikely they would increase public transportation use. Thomas may be thinking that numerous commuters from car-dependent parts of the city will drive to garages near Metro, and they’ll make a profit. However, where exactly will these garages go? Most DC libraries sit on small lots in dense neighborhoods, and for a reason: they’re closer to more residents that way. The new Benning library in Ward 7 will have only a small lot. The Shaw library, next to a Metro station, will have no parking at all. Do our parks have empty lots next to them for garages? Parks have lots of open land, but for recreation, not car storage.

Underground garages cost a bundle. Developers have been asking to reduce the amount of underground parking, not increase it, even in neighborhoods like U Street where it’s hard to park evenings. If the developers of, for example, the Whitman-Walker project at 14th and S thought they could profit from another garage level, they wouldn’t have asked for a special exception from parking requirements. For the Tenley-Janney PPP, where LCOR would have built underground parking, parking for the Janney school was the amenity LCOR would give the community in exchange for profits from residential sales, not the other way around.

Plus, what rates do we expect to charge? When most people talk about “municipal parking” they think of low rates. Montgomery County subsidizes its parking garages. Instead of making money for other uses, the County steers meter revenue into maintaining the garages, relieving drivers of paying the cost of their spaces. Metro’s garages don’t pay for themselves either. The bottom line is that providing parking is usually a money loser. Some cities do earn money from above-ground garages, but with the limited amount of land in DC and our height limit, almost any other use would generate even more tax revenue.

Of course, the bill only requires a study. Perhaps the study will prove that such parking structures would not make any money. Maybe that’s why Councilmembers Cheh and Tommy Wells (Ward 6) cosponsored, along with Chairman Gray, Muriel Bowser (Ward 4), Kwame Brown (at-large), Graham, Marion Barry (Ward 8), and municipal parking aficionado Michael Brown (at-large).

It’s right to criticize these silly policy proposals. However, it’s unlikely that Thomas is introducing them out of a desire to reduce transit ridership or push driving. Instead, like many people in his area and of his generation, he sees the world primarily from a driving point of view. There’s congestion? Build more roads. It’s hard to park? Build more garages. Gas stations are closing? Retain them with incentives.

Those are natural instincts for many people. We must educate them about other ways of looking at policy. Nick Partee wrote,

[Greater Greater Washington is] getting people to think in a different way. … The funny thing is, I didn’t realize I was thinking in a car-centric way until I began reading and saying, “that’s been me”, about just wishing roads were wider. I didn’t think about the systemic problems that lead to traffic and demand for wider roads.

We must explain to Thomas and Michael Brown why their understandable eagerness for municipal garages is misguided. We must connect the dots for Cheh, Graham, Evans, Gray, and the others about how these proposals don’t jibe with their avowed desire for more walkable and mixed-use communities on DC’s scarce acres. Graham has already started to reexamine the parking biases he inherited from father while growing up. With time and persistence, more of our elected leaders will evolve along with the changing public view of our cities.