Photo by Wayan Vota on Flickr.

Last week, I helped organize a focus group of young professionals in Dupont Circle talking about their impressions of the neighborhood, area businesses, city government, the ANC, etc.

When asked about interactions with local government, two people immediately mentioned parking enforcement woes. One person had a fairly typical experience: he parked on the street, came back almost a week later in time for the next street cleaning, and discovered his car gone. In the interim, someone had put up Emergency No Parking signs, then towed the car.

Someone else had parked a car on the street, but also found it missing one day. DPW had no record of towing this car, so she filed a police report for a stolen vehicle. Months later, she found out from the DMV that her car had been actually towed around the corner to a nearby major street, where it had been sitting for months. That street had a rush hour parking restriction, so during those months it had been blocking a lane every single day. It was never towed from there, but had accumulated hundreds of dollars in unpaid tickets.

Let’s solve this problem with technology. The DMV already collects email addresses. I suggest they set, or DPW, up a simple system to email people when they get a ticket or are towed. People could go online to opt in, or we could simply do it automatically. Then, if someone’s car gets a ticket for violating an Emergency No Parking zone and is scheduled to be towed, the owner might find out in time to move the car. If a car gets courtesy-towed around the corner, they will find out; and if, as in the above case, DPW manages not to record it properly, they’ll at least receive a notification when the car is first ticketed.

Our government’s needn’t restrict its interaction with parked cars to putting notices on the windshield and occasionaly moving them. We have easy ways to reach many citizens electronically. Let’s use them.

Update: Mention parking enforcement and everyone’s stories come up. Here’s Ryan’s.

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.