Parking

Throwing the baby out with the 400-foot buffer

by David Alpert   •   April 7, 2008 8:23 pm

The draft parking zoning rules include a provision that multi-unit residential development still needs to construct 1 parking space per 3 units if it is within 400 feet of a low- or moderate-density residential zone (R-1 through R-5-B).

This provision is meant to account for "buffer zones," when high density development closely abuts low density. A few members of the group, from neighborhoods like Friendship Heights, made this their primary issue during the meetings: the parking demand from the people at the high density apartments or stores could mean those people take up all the parking spaces in the lower density neighborhood. The best solution is managing the spillover demand through performance parking rather than just building a lot of parking, but these folks felt strongly and Office of Planning wanted to alleviate these concerns.

However, this solution throws the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of specifying rules for development within 400 feet of a low density zone, this rule applies to almost all residential zones in the entire city—there are only a few R-5-C zones and above, like along 16th Street below U Street, along Massachusetts Ave in Dupont and farther east, the West End, the Fort Lincoln New Town area north of where New York Ave heads out of the District and becomes a freeway, and a couple of other scattered areas.

3 units per space would actually increase the parking requirements in some areas. R-5-E zones, like the south side of P Street around 17th, or C-2-C zones, like the south side of M Street in the West End, currently require 1 space per 4 dwelling units. But both of these examples are within 400 feet of an R-5-B, meaning their parking requirement would go up to 1 space per 3 units.

400 feet is a lot. Almost all of the aforementioned higher density zones are within 400 feet of some lower density zone. All commercial zones in neighborhoods are less than 400 feet wide. I made the following map, which colors in purple all of the areas that are within 400 feet of an R-5-B or below; as you can see, it's just about everything that's not Federal land. Rock Creek Park, the Armed Forces Retirement Home, Saint Elizabeth's, the Arboretum, Bolling Air Force Base and Fort McNair, the Anacostia River, and of course the Mall—take those away and you've got almost no land left.

(Click on the map for an enormous version. If it looks small, click to zoom. If you just see blank space, scroll down or to the right.)

The few areas not in the "buffer" do cover many of the areas slated for major development, like Poplar Point and some of Near Southest. But the "buffer zones" intrude quite awkwardly into many of these areas, meaning that some but not all of it would be exempt. And more importantly, makes almost everything else into a "buffer zone", forcing minimum parking on all multi-family housing almost everywhere in the city. If that's what we really wanted, it'd be simpler to just require one space per three units on all multi-unit residential, and exempt a few special new zones. Instead, the exception has swallowed the rule, and a change that is supposed to abolish most parking minimums isn't really doing that at all.

Some buffer.

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.