Pay-by-phone in San Francisco. Photo by keithpr on Flickr.

Six months ago, the DC Council established performance parking pilot zones in Capitol Hill (around Eastern Market) and in Columbia Heights. In keeping with Donald Shoup’s ideas, the legislation required all revenue from the new parking zones to go directly toward streetscape and transportation improvements in each area, with the community deciding what improvements to buy. That way, some residents and customers might be paying more, but they’ll get a better neighborhood in exchange.

Today, we still don’t really have a true performance parking zone in either area, and the community hasn’t had the opportunity to spend any money. As it turned out, implementing the program took a lot longer than expected. DDOT couldn’t get all the multi-space meters it wanted right away, and some blocks are still waiting for meters. The legislation requires DDOT to study parking rates to determine the appropriate meter prices, but they’re not done studying.

That should change very soon. Meter rates will be going up to equalize supply and demand, and soon thereafter DDOT should begin a conversation with each community about what they want. Capitol Hill could use some new bike racks, since they lost many bike parking spaces when traditional coin-operated stick meters disappeared. Infosnack suggests a long list of streetscape improvements, from street trees to better curb ramps to re-bricking sidewalks where utility companies tore up the bricks and replaced them with cheap asphalt.

Once the neighborhood sees tangible improvements paid for by the parking fees, support for the policy should grow. Currently, it’s mixed; some businesses are happy, like daytime businesses who like turnover on the curb spaces and who formerly had too many spaces filled with commuters. Bars are less happy, since their patrons (who perhaps shouldn’t be driving anyway) now have to pay instead of parking all evening for free.

According to Councilmember Tommy Wells, many Capitol Hill residents appreciate the rules that limit one side of each street to Ward 6 stickers only. Where, on certain blocks, formerly Library of Congress employees would take up all the spaces by moving their cars around all day, now those residents can find spaces. That’s a good stopgap solution, but the real right answer is to price all blocks and (if necessary) give residents a discount. That way, if only 20% of the residential space is used by residents during the day, Library employees can use the other 80% while paying for it with money that will help the neighborhood their driving impacts.

Putting multi-space meters on every block, though, isn’t really feasible. We had a hard enough time getting some multi-space meters, and on many residential side streets, the revenue from parking fees may never cover the cost of an electronic meter. That’s why we need one more piece of the puzzle: pay-by-phone. These side streets could allow Ward 6 stickers only OR a payment over the phone. Once a system is set up, adding it to each block costs nothing more than a few extra signs.

Performance parking started with a pilot so that DC could work out the kinks. Once DDOT sets market-rate meter fees, we should be able to really test out this system. We need to ensure that the process for community input into spending the money truly involves the community and isn’t unnecessarily lengthy, complex or bureaucratic. Once people can see and assuming Capitol Hill and Columbia Heights really get the benefits they want, we can begin advocating to expand this program to Dupont Circle, U Street, Georgetown, and downtown—all areas where demand for parking exceeds the supply and visitors from the suburbs are free riding on free or overly cheap public parking space.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.