Parking
Ballpark area leaders push for walkable rather than car-dependent neighborhood
At Wednesday's Ward 6 performance parking meeting, community members and particularly Councilmember Tommy Wells demonstrated a real commitment to building a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood.
Recreating Crystal City? Photo by Jacqueline Dupree.
Right now, the wide roadways and fairly cookie-cutter new buildings aren't delivering that kind of neighborhood experience. Reverend Brian Hamilton of Westminster Presbyterian in Southwest said that right now, "big cavernous roadways" characterize Southwest Waterfront, instead of the walkable neighborhood that the baseball stadium was supposed to bring.
Hamilton added, "An urban community is urgently needed, not just for the high-income residents who are going to live here seeking a new quality of life which I wish on all of us, but for lower-income residents in our community ... who are vital to the diversity which we should seek to preserve." He called for improvements to "create a more pedestrian-friendly environment where we can get out of our houses, get our of our cars and get into public space."
Wells, too, worried about the development direction of the area. He said,
There are buildings in Near Southeast where if someone placed you in front of the doorway of each building, you wouldn't know where you were. They look all the same. We are recreating Crystal City at a rapid pace and not understanding that the reason people are moving back into the city is for the quality of the pedestrian experience, the multimodal experience. They're using Circulator, using Metro, using bikes and moving back into the city for a higher quality of life.
With the money from ballpark performance parking, leaders like Hamilton and Wells hope to make the neighborhood more than another Crystal City. Wells noted that some communities have places to tie up dogs outside stores, with water for the dog, so shoppers can walk the dog and shop at the same time. Sharon Bosworth of Barracks Row Main Street expressed excitement for the possibility of having electronic signs telling shoppers and diners when the next buses will arrive, and benches for people to wait for those buses.
Chuck Bergman, a board member of Eastern Market and Barracks Row, talked about using signs to make the area feel like one neighborhood and help people find and support local businesses instead of driving over to Virginia.
Most leaders were also positive on the meters themselves, including the Washington Nationals. VP for Government and Municipal Affairs Gregory McCarthy noted that 50-60% of fans take transit to Nationals games, the most in MLB, which has made DC's ballpark a nationwide best practice. He even suggested adding more meters in Buzzard Point, where many blocks now have no meters, no signs, and even in many cases no curbs. (DDOT's Damon Harvey said that DDOT was reluctant to put up signs which would give the impression it was okay to park there, but they are studying the area now to determine a longer-term parking policy.) Bosworth claimed that businesses in Barracks Row "suffered" when meters went in, and both suffered and benefited from the higher traffic associated with baseball.
One resident, Jerry Lee, wasn't so pleased with the meters. He currently lives in the Onyx and is buying a unit at the Velocity. Residents of these buildings can't get RPP stickers, and some are frustrated that parking meters require payment until 9:30 pm. Lee noted that he has an off-street parking space, but wondered about other residents who can't afford one. Lee suggested a parking policy more like that of Georgetown where parking is free starting in the evening.
Lee's reaction is common among people who haven't analyzed parking issues in much depth. It's hard for some people to park, so let's make parking free. However, as he noted, this doesn't impact him, and residents with less money are more likely to be the ones not owning cars who most benefit from DC focusing more resources on the Circulator and Metrobuses instead of more parking.
More importantly, making parking free and unrestricted isn't the only solution, and not a particularly good one; it would just create jam-packed blocks where nobody could find a space, especially around the ballpark. This is certainly a problem in Georgetown, which is a good reason not to copy their current parking policies. In fact, Georgetown is considering implementing its own performance parking system.
Fortunately, Wells has thought a lot about parking, and suggested a fair but much better solution. Right now, outside of game days, blocks around the Onyx and Velocity are fairly empty. That means meter rates are too high. Instead of making parking free, Wells suggested programming the multispace meters to allow people to park all night for a single, relatively low rate. This would especially solve the problem for visitors, which was Lee's biggest issue. They could drive to visit him, pay at the meter once, and not have to worry about a ticket as long as they left before rush hour the next morning.
Harvey also agreed that it may make sense to lower meter rates in some other blocks where parking is currently underutilized, including M Street, where Michael Perkins' analysis in March showed an occupancy rate of 40-50% instead of 85%. DDOT is also considering taking the meters off Virginia Avenue, which has very low utilization. Allen Greenberg, who works at USDOT in the area and , asked if perhaps the low utilization just meant the rates were too high, but Harvey replied that unlike on M Street, they believe that there is just very low demand and that the multispace meters would be better allocated elsewhere. Instead, he hopes to use time limits to limit commuter parking on Virginia Avenue.
Ideally, though, we would retain metering on every block. The pay-by-phone systems DDOT hopes to pilot soon could make this possible without the high cost and maintenance problems of multispace meters. Then, if as on Virginia Avenue the demand is very low, the pay-by-phone rates could simply be low as well.
What about the flip side, raising meter rates? Harvey said that based on their analysis so far, there aren't any blocks that need to have higher rates in the ballpark zone. But there are in Columbia Heights. Next, we'll look at the data for Columbia Heights and what DDOT should do to make that performance parking zone as successful as the one in Ward 6.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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by Jason on Nov 20, 2009 11:31 am • link • report
by Daniel on Nov 20, 2009 11:34 am • link • report
by Thayer-D on Nov 20, 2009 11:39 am • link • report
...that will make it lively for sure and match the disgusting flat topped boxes that have been allowed to proliferate all over down there.
by w on Nov 20, 2009 11:51 am • link • report
Agreed.
Until we go back to smaller lots with more than 3 buildings per block, Ballston is the best we are going to get out of any new neighborhood.
Ballston is OK. Better than a lot of places. Better than anything in a lot of cities around the country. But it ain't Dupont or Capitol Hill.
by BeyondDC on Nov 20, 2009 11:53 am • link • report
by BeyondDC on Nov 20, 2009 11:54 am • link • report
They could force some of the larger buildings to be designed in such a way as to break down the facades into smaller bits but that would send the architectural establishment into a coniption fit.
Umm, the buildings down there are pretty boxlike, but lately that practice is not uncommon. A number of structures in "The Yards" break up the facade.
by Neil Flanagan on Nov 20, 2009 11:58 am • link • report
by wd on Nov 20, 2009 12:09 pm • link • report
by wd on Nov 20, 2009 12:11 pm • link • report
by JLB on Nov 20, 2009 12:28 pm • link • report
How about this, they are functional buildings designed to bring tax-paying businesses into an area of the city that was neglected for most of the last century.
How about this, the Stadium is NOT the economic engine in that neighborhood. The Navy Yard is. Those buildings exist to house Navy contractors. Just like the buildings in Crystal City.
As for "walkability" who cares. Buy a car. Get with the program.
I am sick and tired of people who refuse to purchase a modern and efficient form of transportation whining that the city won't go back to the 1800's to accommodate them.
by buy a car on Nov 20, 2009 12:30 pm • link • report
As long as the ballpark area and near SE continues with full block buildings, no amount of ground floor retail is going to make an enjoyable, walkable neighborhood like Capitol Hill or DuPont.
Wells comment about Crystal City is perceptive. Though I think the form is better (less setbacks, more ground floor things to look at), BDC is right that similarity to Ballston is about the best that can be reached with the current plans.
by Steve Davis on Nov 20, 2009 12:36 pm • link • report
Yes. 600,000 people plus 600,000 cars - that makes sense and won't effect traffic or quality of life at all.
by Adam L on Nov 20, 2009 1:05 pm • link • report
One car may be efficient, but when cars are the only way to get around, there's nothing efficient about the results.
And don't forget -- your modern, efficient drive through DC is made significantly moreso by all of the people who've gone "back to the 1800s," keeping their cars off the roads and out of your way.
by Noah on Nov 20, 2009 1:25 pm • link • report
by BeyondDC on Nov 20, 2009 2:09 pm • link • report
by FourthandEye on Nov 20, 2009 2:14 pm • link • report
by michael on Nov 20, 2009 3:06 pm • link • report
by michael on Nov 20, 2009 3:10 pm • link • report
Because Near Southeast is filling in parts of the L'Enfant Grid and because of DC's land values and zoning rules, building directly to the lot line is essentially a requirement, and that alone is a huge improvement in the overall feeling of a space. The buildings then shape and define the street far better than you see in Ballston (and certainly better than CC).
What's disappointing to me about Ballston is that it has a dense, walkable street network - and that could be so much more (from an urban design perspective) if all of the buildings simply related themselves to the street - if the first 2 floors of all the buildings had zero setback. It had a framework to grow around, but Ballston largely ignored those streets. If anything, Ballston's more haphazard street network could have made a far more interesting urban design, a lot more Boston-like than DC's rigid grid from L'Enfant.
Nevertheless, those realities in DC are what keep DC's urban spaces unique. There's not a whole lot in 'New Downtown' that's all that architecturally interesting, but the urban design is sound. That, at worst, is what Near Southeast will be - not Ballston, and certainly not Crystal City.
by Alex B. on Nov 20, 2009 3:28 pm • link • report
by Scott KC on Nov 20, 2009 3:56 pm • link • report
This is why I personally don't get on the new urbanism bandwagon. I lived in a place like that (Courthouse, actually) for a year and hated it with my very marrow. I picked up and moved to Old Town which is fairly dense, very walkable etc etc and that's my ideal. Capitol Hill and Dupont are also similar (but probably a bit denser as the houses are a floor taller and more of them are apartment conversions than in Old Town).
So, new urbanists,....which is it? Transit oriented high density like Crystal City and Ballston or the more organic neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Dupont? I really could have been misunderstanding the conversation all this time!
by Catherine on Nov 20, 2009 4:10 pm • link • report
A place like Near Southeast will be very new no matter how you slice it, so age isn't really something you can plan around - at least not at this time.
More broadly, it's best to think of the Three D's of urbanism - Density, Diversity, and Design. I'd argue that Ballston and Crystal City both fall short on the 3D's (particularly in the area of urban design, as i noted above). CC also is lacking in diversity - too much office, not enough residential, and all of the land use types are highly segregated from each other.
In terms of good, new design - Crystal City gets credit for being dense, and not much else. That's still a lot better than most standard suburban auto-dependent development, but it could be better.
Ballston has better design and better integration of uses than CC does, but it's still not quite there yet.
Which brings us back to age. These places take time to evolve, both in their uses and their physical forms. Dupont did not become the Dupont we know overnight, it's got a great diversity of use, a diversity of housing types, it's well designed, and it's dense.
In short, you ask "which is it?" I guess I'm saying that's the wrong question to ask. What about it works, and what doesn't?
by Alex B. on Nov 20, 2009 4:39 pm • link • report
Here are some of my thoughts:
-Crystal City is dense but not very walkable since it has a highway running through the center of it.
-It's also doesn't have that much residential housing. I don't have the exact numbers, but residential housing supports significantly more commercial business than office space does.
-Density is not in and of itself the objective. Coop city in NYC is dense, but it's still awful urbansim. You need additional qualities like first floor retail, mixed uses, and proper scaling.
-Courthouse isn't that urban. It's got a huge parking lot in the middle of it. It doesn't have much of a grid street pattern, which makes walking around more of a chore.
by Reid on Nov 20, 2009 4:41 pm • link • report
You have. Density is not the sole goal of new urbanism, and most will voice at least an understanding of the problems with extreme density. Crystal City, while a close approximation in some ways to urbanist goals, is a thin strip of land isolated by zoning and freeways from surrounding development, is composed of superblocks and overcrowded roadways which are resistant to pedestrian activity, and uses underground tunnels (inflexible private commercial spaces) instead of public sidewalks and streets too often. Too much of the land is used for private parking and unusable median "green space". It's not easy to navigate the concrete canyons designed as 'plazas' without people in them, nor does a street grid's navigational quirks draw one to learn about their non-immediate surroundings.
I think you will find that Dupont and Capital Hill are a lot closer in density to Crystal City than you'd imagine - a lot less space is wasted.
by Squalish on Nov 20, 2009 5:52 pm • link • report
Paris is almost entirely low-rise, but it's a very "dense" city, denser than many cities which have lots and lots of towers.
by David Alpert on Nov 20, 2009 7:06 pm • link • report
Bottom Line: I don't like it when people make our decisions. So I wrote a quick note to Mr. Wells and Mr. Harvey after the Wednesday DDOT meeting discussing a scheduling a -promised- future meeting (we'll see if that really happens). I also provided a parking idea for the residents around the ballpark that are now supplied a -No RPP decals- for the vehicles.
One problem: This idea doesn't make any money for the chamber so it got shot down immediately... Here it is... Pls let me have it if you think its crazy talk.... But, just dont knock it try to better it... :)
----
Make a parking decal permit for Ball park residents only:
This would be a parking decal for residents of the multi-story buildings around the ball park (Onyx, Velocity, and Capital Yards ect, ect). They would still have the No RPP, but would be exempt from excessive parking fees.
It's more of a zone within a zone (Zone 6: ball park only).
Tommy and Damon you two must keep in mind that my neighbors want to live in DC, but don't make much money. Over half the people I have interviewed in these buildings spend almost have their month salary on rent. These are work force housing residents you want to keep in the district. (right) All we want is we would like -Free- off street parking option after 6:00pm for ourselves or and visiting family or friends! I don't care about baseball we just want to live and drive home and park without being treated like tourists or non-residents... Something needs to change or these struggling -up and coming- condo buildings are going to be as empty as the streets that you are metering around them are!
Positives for you and for the residents:
--DDOT dictates the rules that apply.
--It would differentiate the residents from fans, daytime business people coming in form MD/NoVa.
--Sticker renewal every 6 months if needed.
--It would make residents with underground parking register their vehicle in DC (non DC residents would be exempt from the Sticker)
--Makes the ball park a unique area and the residents prideful of where they live.
--Develop a bonding agent between the Nats and residents. The residents would have some buy in with the stadium. (Cubs, Sox are good city for resident team
cooperation)
This would be a simple act and these parking stickers would be issued to a limited amount of people and changed according to events and posting around
the park. The ball park is special.. lets make the residents paying thousands of dollars to live feel good and still keep the American dream alive. it's a win/win!
by Mr. Lee on Nov 20, 2009 7:25 pm • link • report
I don't have the data for the ballpark performance parking area, but my experience tonight is that the prices on 8th Street are too low. We circled about a mile while trying to find a spot for dinner. We gave up and went over to Pentagon City, paying $2 for off-street parking.
If the prices were adjusted properly for performance parking, we should have seen about 7-8 open spaces in our search. Any one of them would have been fine. Instead, we saw illegal and double parking.
Based on my read of the Columbia Heights data, DC is basing their meter rate decisions on average occupancy rather than maximum occupancy.
by Michael Perkins on Nov 20, 2009 11:16 pm • link • report
I obviously prefer the urbanism and density of the older neighborhoods we're talking about here--but that's not exactly "new" urbanism, is it? These places are over 100 years old (and in Old Town's case, over 200 years old). As you said, you can't plan out something that has emerged organically over that many years, so these "new urbanist" principles have been developed. And it still seems to me that this principles lead to places like Ballston, Gallery Place and Courthouse (which, as much as I hated it I must say is more than a parking lot--there are a huge number of high-rise apartment buildings clustered all around the Metro and the Courthouse and Wilson/Clerendon Blvds are right there).
I suppose the issue is that I don't see much of a difference between Ballston and places like Gallery Place and Friendship Heights and Rosslyn etc (I do understand the issues with Crystal City), and to me it seems like they are all examples of new urbanism as I understand the term. I don't like this kind of development or this lifestyle, but it DOES seem to be the goals of many people here. So why are we beating up on the Virginia locations, when they're pretty much doing what you want them to do? I'm starting to think it's because they're in Virginia and Virginia bashing is one of DC's most treasured passtimes. Very unproductive expenditure of time, and counterproductive to your goals.
by Catherine on Nov 21, 2009 2:49 pm • link • report
In fact, many New Urban communities really aren't urban. Iconic ones like Seaside, Florida or the Kentlands are really suburban. They're about making those places have the walkable qualities more often found in urban places.
As far as I am concerned, if we had 10 times as many Duponts and Capitol Hills, with a good mixture of some larger apartment buildings, some row houses that are divided up, and some row houses that aren't, where people can choose a busier neighborhood like Dupont or a quieter one like CH - that would be great. The problem we have is that many people want to live in Dupont or Capitol Hill, but there aren't enough of those, and all of the really low density single family areas wield political power to prevent property owners from building new towhnouses except in very limited circumstances. So all of new townhouses are in places like Clarksburg instead.
As for Virginia bashing, that commenter mike who uses Capital Letters All The Time seems to think that I just bash Maryland and favor Virginia. It's not about which state things are in, it's about whether an area succeeds and what we could do better. Crystal City was trying to do good things but was unsuccessful. Ballston is pretty good but could be better. We can talk about how things can be better without having to "bash" them.
by David Alpert on Nov 21, 2009 3:44 pm • link • report
My personal line between 'acceptably tall in a CBD' and 'too tall' for normal non-civic landmark design is at the point where express elevators would be useful, which places like Rosslyn are pushing. A 3-story rowhouse or townhouse with a lot FAR of 1 is pushing the low end of the density envelope that's necessary to be remotely walkable, and only then when mixed uses are present and parking is minimized.
Anything in between is "better than the status quo", but not necessarily matching with the visions set out by New Urbanist thinkers, which include specific suggestions about trees, ground-floor retail, street grids, diversity of class/purpose as a key to flexibility & resilience, small usable parks, boulevards rather than freeways, and wide sidewalks.
The net effect is to try to present a coherent, practical alternative to our utter dependence on personal automobile ownership and suburban social isolation - a form which at the time these ideas arose, had largely destroyed our old urban areas.
by Squalish on Nov 21, 2009 4:13 pm • link • report
So, if that is the new urbanist ideal, where do places like Ballston fall in? Or that new development in Bethesda (I can't remember what it's called--it's by the Bethesda Row Cinema)? Or high-rise apartment buildings in general?
And just kind of "for the record"--I have pretty much my entire life (minus the year of hell in Courthouse) lived in an environment similar to Old Town. I grew up in an old and long established mid-sized town just outside a large city. I walked to school in elementary and middle school (late 80s and early 90s), took public transit to high school, rode my bike EVERYWHERE until I fell into the trap of "yay I'm 16 and have a drivers license now". I've also done the very high density thing--Midtown Manhattan as well as this---whatever it is, at Courthouse. Where I'm at now is what I know works best for me and is the way I wish many more places could be. Just to give an idea of where I'm coming from.
by Catherine on Nov 21, 2009 5:53 pm • link • report
Even though the movements have a lot of overlap and the same press, New Urbanism (an organization with a charter and dues), urbanism, smart growth, traditional neighborhood design, and transit-oriented-development are somewhat different things. When Arlington was planned, there was no such thing as New Urbanism. Andres Duany and Lizz Plater-Zyberk were cutting chipboard in New Haven while they got high and listened to Dark Side of the Moon on LPs.
In the mid-1970s, there was "transit-oriented-development." And that's what they did. They called them "urban villages" at the time, and planners simply centered conventional dense developments around metro stations. New Urbanism is a much more comprehensive architectural and planning program that tries to integrate the two as closely as possible. What Arlington set out do do is good, but imperfect.
So, I'm curious about what you objected to in Court House. The architecture? The streets? The commercialism? The height? Part of the beauty in New Urbanism and similar movements is its adaptability; you don't have to live in a skyscraper and you don't have to live in a center-entrance colonial. I can't say Court House drives me wild, but what about it drove you crazy in particular?
And FYI, David actually posted a documentary of Arlington's development when he was on his honeymoon (6th month anniversary is December 6th, btw).
And, the place in Bethesda is actually called Bethesda Row, not so surprisingly.
by Neil Flanagan on Nov 22, 2009 5:38 am • link • report
To mention these ideals and the architecture that invariably goes with it is still nearly impossible in most architecture schools, which are stuck in the Post WWII bubble where every scientific invention was thought to invariably make our lives better. So the New Urbanism movement was created by DPZ, academics bent on breaking the stranglehold of modernist ideology on schools and consequently the profession. This isn't to say they only want little'old row houses, for them it's all about the walkable street, but a building designed to be appreciated at 2-5 miles per hour will be a lot different (to be sucessfull) than one designed to be apreciated from a highway. So Virginia might seem to get slammed more than DC because it's still dominated by the highway mode of deveolpment, but that is ( inevitably) changing. So whether it's tall glass clad buildings (court house) or beautifully weathered row houses, if the street will accomodate a walkable life style or not is what's important to most new Urbanists. This has been an overly simplistic but I hope helpful in sorting it out. Old, or new, we are designed to live together.
by Thayer-D on Nov 22, 2009 7:20 am • link • report
by w on Nov 23, 2009 12:19 pm • link • report
by beatbox on Nov 23, 2009 6:52 pm • link • report
Potomac Parking is opening a new parking lot located on Half Street between K St and I St, SE, right across from the Jefferson Apartments. It will be open 24 hours a day and offer monthly, daily and hourly rates. (we are still working on our rates)
We are also working on bringing some rideshare vehicles (like ZipCar) to our lot.
Feel free to contact us if you are looking for a reasonable parking rate in the area. 202-332-1815
Art
by Art R. on Nov 25, 2009 1:21 pm • link • report
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