DC should rethink its approach to daytime commercial loading zones

Pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers navigate blocked crosswalks, ADA curb ramps, fire hydrants, bike lanes, sidewalks, and double parking by trucks on an almost daily basis in DC. Delivery truck drivers are facing increased pressure to deliver more packages faster, limited or non-existent enforcement of commercial loading zones, and inadequate curbside space for loading. We need more solutions to enable more predictable parking for delivery vehicles that keep streets safe and operating efficiently. DC should create a new daytime commercial loading zone in residential parking permit (RPP) zones to establish hundreds of on-street spaces for loading.

District households are getting a lot of packages delivered. To start off, households receive daily mail from the United States Postal Service. The average household receives 162 packages annually, or roughly one parcel every three days. And many households order groceries through online services such as Peapod or Instacart. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased the amount of online shopping we all do and many of these consumer behaviors have not reversed. A single household may receive packages from different outlets requiring multiple trucks or large vehicles to be parked nearby.

Too many delivery trucks and not enough loading zones in residential neighborhoods

A mismatch exists between the total number of delivery trucks entering the city and the limited number of available commercial loading zones. Illegal parking by car drivers in commercial loading zones exacerbates the problem and further reduces the availability of parking for commercial vehicles. The District Department of Public Works’ parking enforcement is limited and does not provide enough of a disincentive to drivers who park illegally in loading zones.

With nowhere to go, delivery drivers make unsafe decisions to park in bike lanes or bus stops; double park on streets; park in crosswalks; or block ADA curb ramps and fire hydrants. A delivery truck blocking an ADA curb ramp and crosswalk endangers pedestrians crossing a street and completely prohibits people with mobility challenges who require assistive devices from crossing the street. By blocking visibility of the crosswalk, illegally parked trucks render pedestrians invisible to other drivers, increasing the likelihood of a crash, serious injury, and death. Each of the other types of places trucks park create their own unique or similar dangerous situations.

FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and other parcel delivery companies prioritize the speed of deliveries and the total number of packages employees deliver. Getting an illegal parking citation or two each day is literally the cost of doing business. A Washington Post article in 2013 stated that FedEx and UPS each receive over 50,000 tickets a year worth between $2.5 to $3 million. Surely this number has increased over the past decade with the rise of online shopping. Delivery companies do not pay these staggering amounts; instead, insiders share, the companies negotiate down the total amount paid to the DC government. These costs are ultimately passed on to consumers in the price they pay for shipping.

Commercial corridors like U Street NW, M Street NW, Pennsylvania Avenue SE, and many more places have designated commercial loading zones. Businesses, customers, and residents, alongside curbside planners and decision makers at DDOT, seek to strike the fine balance between commercial loading, pick-up/drop-off, and commercial metered parking zones. In contrast, there is virtually no space in residential neighborhoods dedicated to commercial parking. The District has historically not designated curbside space on residential streets for uses other than parking given the assumption that the greatest demand and expectation from neighbors is that curbside space should be for private vehicle parking. However, the increase of daily delivery necessitates revisiting the expectation that all curbside space on residential streets should always be for residential car parking.

A possible solution

DC consistently ranks in the top 10 US cities with the highest percentage of car-free or car-lite households and for the highest percentage of commuters using non-car modes such as walking, biking, and taking transit. Additionally, the rates of people working from home skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and work from home rates remains high given the large percentage of office-based professional workers. Taken all together, many DC households own no car or one car which conceivably is not used for daily commuting. These cars are the ones that tend to have snow on them for days after the infrequent winter storm. However, a sizable minority of DC households use their private cars daily to commute to work, school, medical care, worship and other activities. The daily churn of cars in residential neighborhoods results in an available inventory of on-street parking space during the traditional 9 am to 5 pm working hours.

There is a unique opportunity to designate some of this vacant curbside space for weekday deliveries. DDOT could create a new curbside zone for weekday daytime deliveries such as from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The zones would continue to be residential parking or residential permitted parking before 9:00 am and after 5:00 pm, and all day on Saturday and Sunday. Residents who regularly commute for a 9-to-5 job could leave this daytime zone before the commercial loading restriction starts and would return home after work to a parking spot without restriction or would be able to find another spot nearby. The zone would be a minimum of 30 to 40 feet in length, which is 1.5 to two spaces for a typical car. There are thousands of residential blocks in the District and creating a single zone on one side of the street would greatly increase space for commercial vehicles during the weekday.

There is precedent for creating flexible zones within residential neighborhoods. The School Parking Zone program was created by the DC Council to allow a limited number of permits to approved schools for teachers and staff to park within residential neighborhoods. The underlying principle is the same: some of the on-street parking is available during the day while residents who use their private cars are gone. Creating a commercial loading zone would extend this concept of use that is vital to residents – getting packages, mail and deliveries.

First steps for the District

Delivery drivers need predictable and reliable parking spaces to park their large vehicles. While there can be some available curbside space on a residential street during the day, the location and accessibility may not be predictable or suitable. For example, a single mid-block parking space is effectively available for more package delivery trucks. The newly created daytime commercial loading zone should be placed at the beginning or end of a row of parking. This location would be most accessible for a large vehicle to park without a significant challenge or complex maneuver. DDOT could launch a small-scale pilot to test the concept, signage, enforcement, effectiveness, and ultimately the safety impact.

A daytime commercial loading zone would create dedicated and predictable curbside space for delivery drivers to serve the growing delivery demands of District residents while seeking to reduce the dangerous and unsafe parking behaviors by delivery drivers. The new zone would put the underutilized resource of available daytime on-street parking in residential neighborhoods to use for a critical need. Moreover, there will be little or no impact on households that park their vehicles on public streets. Most importantly, all road users will benefit from unblocked crosswalks, clear and free bike lanes, truck-free sidewalks, and streets without double-parked trucks.