In Columbia Heights, only 25% of residents own cars. With a Metro station and numerous bus lines, bike lanes and Zipcars, it’s a neighborhood conducive to car non-ownership. But if you were at the public meeting on Tuesday night to discuss proposed changes to parking policy, you might think that 75% of residents drive every day, and the other 25% work for smart growth or bicycle advocacy organizations.

When the DC USA retail complex opens, with Target and other major national chains, many people will be driving to the neighborhood. To encourage shoppers to park in the government subsidized 1,000-space garage instead of the neighborhood streets, Councilmember Graham is planning to introduce legislation that would let DDOT implement new residential parking restrictions and new types of parking demand management.

If the plan presented is what’s enacted, the residential side streets will keep regular Residential Parking Permit (RPP) rules on one half of the street, and get “enhanced RPP” on the other side. The current rules allow anyone to park for two hours, and only residents of Ward 1 with stickers can park for longer during daytime hours. Under the new proposal, on the Enhanced RPP side of the street only residents will be able to park at all, with no grace period. Hours would also be extended later into the evening, until about 10 pm, so people couldn’t come around dinnertime and avoid parking restrictions. (In blocks where the RPP ends at 8:30, a common end time for RPP in DC, people can show up at 6:30 and use their two hour grace period for the remaining time, effectively parking as long as they want.)

Some blocks on the main, high-density commercial part of 14th Street will be “performance parking” zones, with meters. DDOT wants these areas to serve people who need to run into a dry cleaner or coffee shop and for whom the hassle of driving into the garage is a deterrent. They want to use Shoup-style pricing, setting a price high enough to ensure a maximum of 85% occupancy, meaning about one space is available per block at any time. They are also proposing “transitional zones” on side streets closest to the commercial center, which would use performance-priced meters, but Ward 1 residents would be exempted.

Finally, they want to add some more no parking zones right in front of commercial buildings, to lengthen bus stops (making it easier for buses to get in and out), adding some taxi stands, and giving some older buildings loading zones.

After DDOT gave their presentation, citizens had the chance to speak. Some people criticized Graham and DDOT for waiting until the last minute to work on this issue, even though DC USA has been in the works for years. Many people asked if their blocks, just outside the study area, could be included in the plan. DDOT wants to keep the plan small, but in the long run it’s a good idea to expand these parking restrictions. Especially with so many cheap garage spaces, having any place people can park for free (as one side of all streets will be) will only lead some people to cruise around to avoid paying a couple dollars.

I don’t think all of these zones need to be so complex, actually. I think DDOT should simply replace all parking within a few blocks with one of two types. On commercial streets, they should use “performance parking”, with meters priced to encourage the Shoup target of 85% occupancy. On residential streets, the “transitional” zone is appropriate, with meters to manage the occupancy and exemption for local residents. And “local residents” should mean people who actually live right nearby, not the entire ward.

More widespread “transitional performance parking” would solve several problems. Many residents complained about how hard it is to find parking, especially in the early evening. Some people complained that they had to park three blocks away, felt unsafe walking home from there, and wanted to be able to park in front of their houses. One woman ranted for ten minutes about how even her mother wouldn’t even visit her “because no place to park”. But it surely is hard to park in Columbia Heights, and performance pricing would make it easier. If every block were priced so that visitors paid the amount needed to ensure 85% occupancy or less, and local residents could park for free, most blocks would have spaces available and many residents really would be able to park in front of their houses.

The only case this wouldn’t solve, of course, is if there were enough residential demand that just residents’ cars took up all the spaces. Speakers at the Columbia Heights meeting generally expressed that Maryland and Virginia drivers were the problem, though one person complained about her neighbors who had five cars, some of which were trucks, all parked on the street. (DC once considered a cap on residential stickers per household, but it did not pass.) This problem would get even worse if Ward 1 received visitor parking passes, like those being piloted in Ward 4 and considered for Ward 3. Unfortunately, Councilmember Graham stated at the meeting his intention to expand the program to Ward 1—somewhat baffling, actually, that he’d suggest letting more cars park for free given that he’d just heard 10-20 people complaining that there were already too many cars parking for free on their streets.

But performance pricing would solve this problem, too: on streets that have lots of space during the day, the 85% occupancy rule would automatically set the daytime meter price at zero, meaning nannies or home health care workers could park there for free and not require a special guest pass. For busier streets, they could choose to pay a smallish price (during the day it surely would be small) or park a few blocks farther where the price was lower or free.

Unfortunately, since few people at these community meetings know much about parking policy, the discussion almost always revolves around how to give more free parking while also ensuring parking availability. With those economically conflicting goals, we end up with a patchwork of complex parking rules and externalities, like the mother who can’t park at all. DDOT is on the right track with their performance parking program, but rather than creating a variety of intermediate zones, they should utilize the performance meters everywhere possible and expand the zone quickly.

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.