Unnecessary parking and a curb cut

Even opponents of lower parking minimums agree with me on at least one thing: curb cuts are bad. They create more places where cars will be crossing the sidewalk and potentially imperiling pedestrians, and they also take away curb space on the street which removes public, shared parking to create exclusive private parking. They’re also aesthetically bad, making the city feel more car-oriented and less walkable. And with alleys behind most buildings, there’s no good reason to make cars cross the sidewalk.

Nevertheless, we’re still allowing new curb cuts. The June 18 Current reports on a long-controversial condo development at 2351 Champlain Street in Adams Morgan (beginning, continuation) which will have 8 units and 4 parking spaces in the rear. That’s enough spaces even under the current, 1958 zoning minimums, but not enough for this project, which also received permission for a curb cut to access a new underground level with six more spaces. They should have built the garage access from the rear, but instead got the city to give away some of the public’s space. The project will devote two of the rear spaces to Zipcars, which is good, but not worth the cost.

Fortunately, the proposed new zoning rules won’t allow this kind of thing. They require off-street parking to be accessed from the alley where one exists (and a secondary street for corner lots). However, even in the best case these rules won’t go into effect until 2010.

Meanwhile, at parking working group meetings, Alice Kelly of DDOT assured participants that DDOT is implementing new public space rules that don’t allow curb cuts. I hope they hurry, before too many new projects build unnecessary curb cuts like 2351 Champlain.