I think you have to come up with at least a standard 'reduction' for curb cuts, fire hydrants, bus stops, and so on.

It would also be interesting to empirically test your model and walk one of those streets, counting the spaces - and checking that against your model.

by Alex B. on Nov 12, 2008 9:29 am  

The word "townhome" is an abomination created by the real estate industry, which wants to call everything a "home" because of warm associations. It grates like squeaking chalk. Use "townhouse," I beg of you.

by Mike on Nov 12, 2008 9:29 am  

In the indicated neighborhood, the term should be "rowhouse."

by Amy on Nov 12, 2008 9:40 am  

Who at a resident parking hearing is complaining against residential parking? I don't think there's enough. And I don't think they should be two hour guest spots the rest of the time. I'm a brat, but all for resident only all the time - especially in Georgetown! There's approximately 6 spots among the meters for our 40+ townhouses. Then meters until 10pm and Graham wants to raise the prices for those. Love it.

by sarah on Nov 12, 2008 10:08 am  

Mike is absolutely right!

by tt on Nov 12, 2008 10:10 am  

Amy: Thanks, and I agree. I've always called them "townhomes", but you're right. "Townhouses" was orginally the term for the in-capital homes of landed gentry in the United Kingdom. "Rowhouse" is more applicable in this neighborhood.

Concerning Alex B's question, is there anyone from that area that would be willing to walk the perimeter of just one of those blocks and let us know how many homes and cars parked are there? I would recommend doing it in the evening since that's when I heard it is most crowded. I would love to do it but it's relatively far from both my work and home. Otherwise, I can do it using the new, nifty street view tool from Google.

by Michael Perkins on Nov 12, 2008 10:12 am  

I used to live on 18th and Kenyon, right in the middle of this area. It should be noted that nearly all these townhouses have one (usually two) alley parking spots as well.

by longley on Nov 12, 2008 10:19 am  

First, the residents of those homes are not the only people who use the RPP zoned spaces on those streets. Many of the rowhouses would include accessory units or might be subdivided even further, with two or more households in a structure. Finally, your metholology grossly overstates the number of available spaces. The capacity estimate can really only be accurately done with a site visit and needs to take into account curb cuts, distance from corners, loading zones, bus stops and other areas where no parking is allowed. This also results in fractional spaces which would not count. Instead, you could have looked at DDOT studies which include parking utilization statistics. I am not familiar with this particular neighborhood, but certainly there are many residential neighborhoods across the District which your methodology would show plenty of parking available where the parking utilization rates are at unacceptable levels, even exceeding 100%, and certainly exceeding 80% for most blocks.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but you have put together a very misleading picture of parking availability in residential neighborhoods.

by Andy on Nov 12, 2008 10:22 am  

Nothing about parking-I hear "rowhouse" and think of Baltimore. Since I've been in DC (1991) I have learned to refer to these attached houses as "townhouse". Visitors have asked me what the difference is between a townhouse and a rowhouse, and, since i have an opinion on everthing whether it's informed or not, I came up with a distinction based on my observation and bias: DC Townhouses are nicer than rowhouses (at least the one's I've been in, in Balto). DC Townhouses are bigger-usually 3 stories to rowhouse 2, and wider. And they are better looking architechturally with bay windows, spires and handcarved stone details done by artisans working on the National Cathedral, and more interesting and thoughtful details inside. Compare the rowhouses in Fedreal Hill, Balto to the townhouses in Shaw, Petworth, Dupont, Cap Hill, etc. Does Balto, the land of historic rowhouses with their white marble front stoops, have any townhouses like the ones in these DC 'hoods?

by Bianchi on Nov 12, 2008 11:31 am  

I live in a townHOUSE and on weekends and most evenings I can't park anywhere near it, so I get to haul my kid and my groceries through the neighborhood unless I do my shopping on Saturdays at 8 AM.

Hydrants can take up more than a car length and, depending on where they are positioned, cut out an extra space because of the "integer problem." For example, the hydrant may leave 2-3/4 length to the curb but you can't park 3/4 of a car, so only 2 cars fit legally (or one contractors' megatruck). With bus stops it's even worse.

In my neighborhood businesses like the Lincoln Theater, Busboys and Poets, and the illegal night-time and weekend sub-leasing of DCPS's Harrison School building by the Children's Studio School fill the residential neighborhoods with cars from VA and MD despite the many available transit options (U Street Metro, Route 90/96/98 and 52/54 bus lines, etc.)

Furthermore, construction frequently removes 10 to 50 street parking spots for months or years at a time.

So anyone who DARES suggest that residents have too much street parking had better prepare for an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.

by Ward 1 Guy on Nov 12, 2008 11:49 am  

Bianchi, I live in DC (Eastern Market) and my boyfriend lives in Baltimore (Patterson Park). I would call both DC and Baltimore's houses rowhouses. Here's the definitions upon which I base that assessment:

One of a group of an unbroken line of attached houses that share common side walls, known as party walls.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/glossary/glossary.shtml

A residential building, usually built as rental apartments, in which the floor plan is commonly repeated from unit to unit, with each unit sharing a wall with the adjacent one. The building has a single continuous wall along the street.

http://www.cityofutica.org/gloss.doc

One of a row of houses situated side by side and sharing a common wall

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rowhouse

The definition for townhouse appears to be much more general:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291&q=define:townhouse&btnG=Search

The thing that distinguishes rowhouses specifically from townhouses in general is that they're a row of virtually identical plans from a single architect/builder. The fact that many of the DC rows are nicer than ones in Baltimore is irrelevant, IMO (even if a point of pride). BTW, the entire street of rowhouses where my boyfriend lives in the east side of Patterson Park are three story rowhouses and significantly more ornate than any in Federal Hill. The same is also true of nearly all the houses in Bolton Hill and Mt Vernon, all of which are equals to any in DC.

by Sean Robertson on Nov 12, 2008 12:27 pm  

Ok! But the real question is-will there be parking?

by Bianchi on Nov 12, 2008 1:50 pm  

Rowhouses, period. How many in this survey area have been converted into condos (4 units in what was originally a single family house)? How many have a basement unit?

by Brendan on Nov 12, 2008 2:27 pm  

... and group homes. I remember looking at homes in this neigbhorhood when I was looking to buy a few years back and at least a couple of the home I visited were group homes with 5 - 6 individuals in them.

Btw, I think Sean described the difference between rowhouse and townhouse accurately. A rowhouse is basically "one of many similar" houses built at one time. Sort of like "tract homes" of the present era. Where a townhouse is an individually constructed house. Equivalent to a "spec" (i.e., speculative) or "custom" home built today. I think the confusion came about when developers in the '70s started using the term "townhouses" to describe the rowhouses they were building in planned developments in the suburbs ... which of course morphed to townhome to give it that warm and cozy feel.

by Lance on Nov 12, 2008 2:37 pm  

Lance, do you have any evidence that people living in group homes have higher rates of car ownership?

by Alex B. on Nov 12, 2008 2:43 pm  

In re: group houses and car ownership. Having lived in a few of these, and having many friends who did/do, I would say you have about 2/3 - 3/4 car ownership. Usually it's only one or sometimes two in the house that doesn't have a car, the majority usually will. Granted this is not an empirical study, just based on observations.

by local on Nov 12, 2008 3:30 pm  

Of course, we could also actually use Census data. For example, for the District, the 2000 Census shows that for the 101,216 households in owner-occupied housing, there was approximately 1.26 vehicles per household, with 48.5% of the households having one vehicle, 26.8% having two vehicles, 5.8% having three vehicles and 1.5% having four vehicles or more. Approximately 17.5% of households in owner-occupied housing had no vehicles. Vehicle ownership was lower for the 93,025 households that rent, with 0.63 vehicles per household. Approximately 40.15% of renting households had one vehicle, 7.7% had two, and 2% had three or more. Approximately 50.3% of renting households had no vehicles.

Combining renters and owner-occupants, there were approximately 0.9 vehicles per household, and yet the minimum parking requirements are as low as 0.25 spaces per housing unit, less than half the vehicle ownership rate for renters, and less than one-fifth the vehicle ownership rate for owner-occupied housing. One can also look at particular sections of the District or particular age groups, and by whether any members of the household are employed. For many neighborhoods, vehicle ownership rates are significantly higher than the average for the District. It is lower for households where none of the members are employed.

In addition, you would need to look at other data to determine how many housing units are in each structure. Certainly, as local observed, many group houses have relatively high vehicle ownership rates, and also many structures, even those that look like detached single family houses or rowhouses, have more than one housing unit.

by Andy on Nov 12, 2008 4:52 pm  

The census data is interesting, but we need to be very careful about how to use it. Part of the problem with parking requirements is that of causality - we're determining in advance how many parking spaces a place will require, when driving is more of a lifestyle choice (especially in a city with robust transit options) than a fact of life.

Taking a District-wide average is dangerous, as well - considering the wide variety of built environments that encompasses - everything from vast estate homes to dense condo and apartment blocks, and transit conditions ranging from low frequency bus service to high frequency subway service.

Finally, the census shows existing conditions. It should not be mistaken for a true analysis of the impact of those conditions. Also, policies influence outcomes - the same way that bus fares are cheaper with a SmarTrip to encourage more people to use it, parking requirements shape our environment and our behavior. Setting requirements as some sort of magical match to the 'true' level of demand is a fallacy. Our policies, rather, should take into account the impacts of such regulations and tie them into other desired outcomes vis a vis land use, design, transportation, the environment, economic development, etc.

Local, my anecdotal evidence with group houses supports the opposite conclusion - which shows the limit of said anecdotal evidence.

Oh, and to me, it's "rowhouse."

by Alex B. on Nov 12, 2008 5:08 pm  

On my street, the rowhouses are 16 feet wide. I don't get the 1.7-spaces-per-house calculation at all. A 2009 Honda Civic is 14.5 feet long. To say nothing of the space inevitably left between cars.

by Am turnip on Nov 12, 2008 6:20 pm  

Regarding group homes, I share a house with two other people just south of Lincoln park and none of us have cars. I myself haven't had a car since about a month after moving here (and I don't miss it either!).

by Sean Robertson on Nov 12, 2008 6:26 pm  

Alex, I wasn't suggesting that the city-wide averages hold for every neighborhood, and in fact, I stated that they don't. I provided city-wide averages simply to show the type of data that you can pull up yourself in a matter of minutes. This data is available for relatively small geographic areas, and I invite you to look up the average vehicle ownership and percent of households with zero, one two, three vehicles or more for smaller geographic areas. With DC's minimum parking requirement at .25 to .5 spaces per apartment, I don't think you will find areas that have ownership rates lower than those minimum parking requirements.

And, no, this isn't a matter of people buying cars because of minimum parking requirements. That simply doesn't make any sense. Buying and maintaining a vehicle is a major decision, and the ability to rent a parking space isn't the motivation. For many parts of the city and for many types of households, as discussed on many other pages of this blog, our public transportation system cannot replace ownership of a car. People need to reach jobs that are not near public transportation, or work shifts where use of public transportation is difficult, or have obligations that make use of public transportation for every trip difficut, or simply live in neighborhoods where public transportation is infrequent, unreliable, or too far from their residence to make its use for every trip acceptable. Perhaps, you need to take a look at the different neighborhoods, the different types of households, their abilities and their transportation needs, and not just think about the abilities and transportation needs of the relatively young, healthy, affluent individuals and couples living in the downtown neighborhoods.

by Andy on Nov 12, 2008 6:54 pm  

Ok, I used the 600-700 block of 7th Street SE as well as the 400 block of 7th Street Southeast to confirm my estimate of the number of parking spaces per foot.

For 600-700 blocks of 7th, I counted 31 cars or spaces where cars had parked legally. There was one alleyway which looked like there could be 2 cars that fit (which I did not include in the count). Using the same method as before, I estimated 35 parking spaces from the map, so my map method overestimates by approximately 10-15%.

For the 400 block, I counted 14 cars or spaces and one driveway, compared to 17 estimated by the map, so that was a 20% overestimate.

The whole purpose of this exercise was to confirm that there are not a whole lot of spaces compared to houses in a townhouse neighborhood. My hypothesis was that it would certainly be less than 2 per household and closer to 1.0, since a car and a house are about the same length. Based on the new data, I would say it's probably close to 1.5, but there is a little padding in this because a couple of the streets in 1D05 have nobody on the opposite side.

With this in mind, doesn't it make sense that the number of RPP stickers per household should be limited in some way? Why has almost all the debate on this thread concentrated on the minimums issue and not on the policy change that might actually do some immediate good: limiting your ability to park as many cars as you want? It's clear the neighborhood is crowded. Why should some people take up more than their fair share by parking four cars?

by Michael Perkins on Nov 13, 2008 7:08 am  

"Why has almost all the debate on this thread concentrated on the minimums issue and not on the policy change that might actually do some immediate good?"

The debate is about the minimum parking requirement issue because the Office of Planning is advocating removing the minimum parking requirement, which is the current way of addressing the spillover problem, without first demonstrating that there is another solution. Take the removal of minimum parking requirements off the table, and we can talk about other solutions, and if one is found and proven to work, then is the time to revisit the elimination of minimum parking requirements. Doing this in the wrong order simply causes irreverseible harm.

Please remember that your jurisdiction has minimum parking requirements four times as high as the District's as well RPP policies that would clearly be politically impossible to impose in the District, such as exclusion of apartment buildings from the RPP program.

by Andy on Nov 13, 2008 8:22 am  

Andy, I understand what you're saying about minimums being the biggest issue, but don't you agree that regardless of how the debate over minimums turns out, a maximum number of RPP permits is a policy that helps the problem of crowded residential street parking?

If you ignore new apartment buildings, there's even a parking capacity problem in a townhouse-only neighborhood, when people are allowed as many permits as they choose.

If minimums were to go away, wouldn't it make sense to limit the number of total permits to reduce the magnitude of the spillover effect?

I understand Arlington has different rules, and I'm lobbying to change them here (there will be a change in the master transportation plan early next year). That doesn't mean that it's a rational argument to ignore someone just because they're from Arlington.

by Michael Perkins on Nov 13, 2008 8:52 am  

Andy, I think the opposite is true - years and years of minimum parking requirements already have done irreversible harm - DC is lucky to have a subway and good mass transit - other American downtowns are chock full of surface parking lots and ugly garages.

Minimum parking requirements were put in place with little or no thought as to their impact and they've done great damage to our cities. Keeping them in place is doing things in the wrong order.

Order isn't all that relevant, either. These policy work in concert with one another. Price curb parking, let the market decide how much off-street parking to supply, and the system will reach an equilibrium. The only thing the current system is good at is keeping prices low - in exchange for poor urban design, worse congestion, worse emissions, worse mass transit, etc.

by Alex B. on Nov 13, 2008 9:09 am  

The order is not only relevant, but critical, since there is no evidence that there is a politically feasible way in which to mitigate the spillover impact.

What I have seen in the posts here is that the advocates for eliminating the minimum parking requirement and then trying to see if they can address the resulting harm is that the posters do not understand the nature of the parking issues in most of DC's neighborhoods, and that they have no idea about the political constraints on the types of policies that could be adopted, and like GGW, they do rely heavily on a Reaganesque analysis of these issues.

by Andy on Nov 13, 2008 2:01 pm  

We created an online application around DC Parking for the DC Innovation contest. you can see it at www.parkitdc.com

by Shaun on Nov 13, 2008 4:23 pm  

That is AWESOME, Shaun! Nice work!

by Sean Robertson on Nov 13, 2008 4:27 pm  

It seems cute, but grossly inaccurate. Garages shown where there are none, and actual garages missing, and the designations on most streets was wrong. What were you using as a database?

by J on Nov 13, 2008 4:36 pm