Wayback VII: Downtown Parking

damn, thats nuts.

i love the metro.

If you want to see this way-back-machine in the flesh and steel, head over to the Capitol where you can still see acres of surface lots full of cars with out of state plates. Best of all, at least half of those drivers probably work for a Senator or Representative that claims to be environmentally conscious! Yay for hypocrisy!

To clarify for the geographically impaired, the photo is looking north, so we are seeing the south and east sides of the Wilson building. On the right side is 13th St. The top of the Willard Hotel peeks above the Wilson building.

I remember parking across the street for performances at the National and Warner Theatres.

Speaking of parking, I’m suprised DC hasn’t gotten onboard with automated parking garages, which have been in cities such as Boston and New York for decades. Vertical garages are much more efficient than surface lots.

There is an automated parking lot in an apartment building near McPherson Square – it’s very cool

#5: DC actually has at least one current and one planned automated parking garage – we’ll make a blog post out of the topic!

The Roosevelt apartment building at 16th and V NW has an automated garage. After renovations, it was the only way they could meet the city’s requirements for providing enough parking spaced. Entrance is in the alley off V street.

One of the issues currently proposed to the city council is to reduce the parking space requirements for new/renovated buildings. Sounds good to me … then increase the number of required bike parking spots, too please.

I vote for closing off Jefferson and Constitution around the museums to traffic and bus parking.

It is amazing how often a serious pedestrian accident is avoided in this area. Taxis, tour buses and cars come racing by without stopping at the cross walks in front of the museums. Plus, who wants to smell all of those fumes?

#8 – on a somewhat related note, i have always thought that a great solution would be for a developer to enter into a deal with Zipcar and for say, a 100 unit condo building put in 5 or 6 cars in the garage including maybe one SUV, one full size car and 3 or 4 midsize / compact cars. That way you could probably reduce the number of spaces you needed.

not sure what exactly to do with that idea but always thought it would be a neat solution.

#10, The Embassy Suites on 10th & NY has almost the exact arrangement you suggest. They’ve got 10 or so zipcars ranging from the ever-popular mini, to a speedy 4 door BMW. No SUV’s that I know of, but they do have several cars with good cargo space (hatchbacks).