Parking

Stadium opens without parking, world doesn't end

by David Alpert   •   April 2, 2008 10:12 am

If you are in the DC area and haven't been living under a rock, you know that DC's brand-new (and entirely taxpayer-funded) stadium opened last weekend. You also know that the city built remarkably few parking lots, telling fans to take Metro, bike (using the free bike valet) or take a shuttle from parking lots at RFK Stadium.

Metro worked on opening night.
Photo via JDLand.

Columnists and pundits expressed serious skepticism leading up to the opener, warning about possible chaos on the Green Line and wondering if Metro would be ready. Marc Fisher wrote "we're car people" (not sure if he means Washingtonians or just himself) and called the walk from Capitol South "scary". Commenters on Post stories and various bloggers predicted gridlock in the streets.

Now that Opening Night has come and gone, what happened? Everything went just fine. One Post commenter wrote, "I was so impressed with metro on Saturday that I wrote an email to them complimenting all the employees that I encountered." JDLand noticed that the lots near the stadium weren't even full.

Good for DC for resisting the warnings from team owners and various commentators that the world would end unless the entire neighborhood were converted to parking as New York did to the South Bronx. Looks like parking demand is elastic, after all.

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.