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Anonymous wrote:1) It's a relatively tiny area of NW.
2) The $8/hour is only from 6pm-3am (ie, nightlife time)
3) The purpose is to encourage street parking spots to turn over frequently, which I am all for.
Street parking should be expensive and, in high demand zones, it should primarily serve people who want to park for an hour or less. If you're coming for a night out? Find a garage.
So we're going to require people who are getting completely hammered in bars to move their car frequently because they will be worried about the meter, and then they will have to drive around for 45 minutes (while inebriated) looking for a new parking spot. What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah, that's what we are going to *require.*
(No, the game is actually to incentivize people to park in a garage or take an uber. Which they largely will, if the price is comparable.)
You have a lot of faith in 21 year olds to do the right thing (ironic, of course, because DC doesn't prosecute 21 year olds for crimes because supposedly they have bad judgment because their brains are still developing).
This plan incentivizes drunk driving.
The plan incentivizes drunk driving by making driving inconvenient and expensive? Huh.
It actually incentivizes people to stop going to U Street!
Exactly!!! I no longer hang out at night...I'm old, but do we really want our city to no longer have a vibrant night life? I love the crowds and seeing restaurants and clubs make money. Let's not try and kill that!
The idea here seems to be that cheap or free street parking is a requirement for having a vibrant night life.
It certainly helps. Duh.
Does it, though?
If you had one bar selling beers at $8 a pop, and a similar bar selling the same beer at $20 per, most would say people will gravitate towards the first and avoid the second. Why would it be any different for neighborhoods? If you tell young people who tend not to make very much money that it will cost them $40 to park in U Street for the night, but $0 to park in a similar neighborhood with similar bars, then why is it strange to think they'll avoid U Street?
young people are not driving to bars, they are taking public transit and uber. So they don't care how much it costs to park. get it?
This is the fundamental dynamic at play in this thread and others like it. People above a certain age are used to things being car centric, and that's not appealing for most people under 40 now.
That is factually inaccurate, you live in a bubble that is not remotely representative of how most Americans live. More than 90% of households in the US own a car and most people use their cars as their primary form of transportation. If DC makes it difficult for people to use cars on U street most people will just not visit area at all.
DC (especially U st) is not 90% of America.
Even in DC 2/3 households have a car. Arlington 88%, MOCO, 91%. It’s going to be challenging for many DC businesses to stay open when policies are actively hostile the primary form of transportation for most potential customers.
Having a car and taking that car to night life aren't the same thing either. Probably half of DC car owners are not even car commuters. Its very easy to be car light in DC. You use the car to go to the beach, or hiking or something like that while metro/bike/uber gets you around town.
Having said that, this is probably a net improvement for U street businesses as it will increase parking availability and turn over. They'll probably lose some customers that are extremely price sensitive while gaining others that don't mind paying more to park if it means not having to circle for 20 minutes or park 5 blocks away. The people they lose are the type that camp out for 4 hours nursing a beer, while they may gain 2 new customers that come for 2 hours each and depart. That's way better for businesses.
This is how it is for my family. DH & I both have cars and live in Adams Morgan. We do not move our cars from our street after 4PM Friday night. If we decide to do evening activities over the weekend here in DC, we use a car share. Trying to find parking where we are going is usually bad enough but to then not be able to find parking once we get home is awful. I do believe the $8 parking fee will hurt businesses where customers come from out of town (MD, VA).
What would help businesses would be if DC actually charged you a reasonable price for car storage so you didn’t leave not one but TWO cars in the street most of the week that you apparently rarely drive or need. Then there actually would be space for those with a need to drive to Adams Morgan. You’re part of the problem!
PP: How are we part of the problem when we pay for residential parking?? Are you saying that people that own or rent homes shouldn't have the privilege of being able to park their cars at a reasonable distance from their house?
The amount people pay for residential parking is a ridiculous pittance, particularly in a dense area like Adams Morgan. So yes, I think households need to pay more to take up a big chunk of public space with TWO cars they admittedly barely drive.
How much do restaurants pay for streateries and the other ugly, unsanitary, barely used dining shanties they build on public property?
streeteries go through a very thorough licensing process and once the current batch expires they will probably be around a $300 fee (similar to a sidewalk cafe). And of course they serve many more people than does car storage for a single person. a much more productive use of public space.
Ok so you agree they basically pay nothing? And the dining lean-tos that I see are typically empty. Those restaurant owners would be better off if they converted the space back into parking spots. If there's nowhere to park and your shanty is empty, you're not exactly selling yourself to prospective customers. It looks like no one wants to go there.
The reason they are empty is that noone wants to eat in the road of a major thoroughfare.
The reason that this parking plan is going to fail U Street is that it’s market position is as a low cost/budget nightlife area that does not directly compete with high cost/expensive nightlife areas.
This plan makes the area into a high cost nightlife area that is still budget quality. That’s a bad market position to be in.
Perhaps low budget nightlife isn't something the city actually wants. Maybe the city is ok with pushing the quality up and the riff raff out.
The entertainment market in DC is not big enough. The Wharf and Navy Yard have cannibalized restaurants and nightlife in other neighborhoods, particularly H Street and Chinatown/Penn Quarter.
U Street right now is barely hanging in. If it wasn’t for the 9:30 Club and the Atlantic, who rent parking from Howard, the neighborhood would be in even worse shape.
This move runs the risk of turning it from a trendy dive bar neighborhood into an untrendy Bowery type neighborhood. It will be a classic case of being careful what you wish for.
Newcomers to DC don’t know that the neighborhood suffered from riots in in ‘68 and later became and epicenter of the city’s crack epidemic.
The revitalization of the neighborhood to where it is now was a monumental effort and still not good enough. This kind of arrogant, ideology driven and frankly unnecessary policies can very easily help it in its way as it backslides from the much better neighborhood it was a decade ago.
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