Parking Space Hogs
Do you spend hours looking for a parking space in DC neighborhoods? Say when you are driving home late at night and do not want the long, lonely walk back to your place?
Or when you are late for a date, and know she’s looking at her watch dismissively, counting every second of you tardiness?
Do you ever see moving boxes like these taking up valuable parking space? Are they there for days too? This set was on Mt Pleasant Avenue for a week straight.
If you were looking for a parking space late, did you ever think about torching these boxes? Or at least ramming them with your car?
I wanna know who is obnoxious enough to ask for these shipping boxes to be left on the street. How self-important do you have to be to take up this much parking space for a week? Do pray tell!
The real question is whether or not they paid the meter…
Why does the city allow this? They should come tow that mess right away. No one should have the right to do that.
So I called the city today, since I had nothing better to do, and asked if this was legal. Sure enough, it is. You need to get a permit, which is good for up to 5 days, if you want to put storage boxes in a parking space. The permit costs $19.
You can get a permit from the city, I called over to Zoning and they put me through to the right people.
I wonder if I can get a permit for the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue? oR better yet, One Judicary Sqaure?
Wayan: seems to me like you should find out post haste.
I’d imagine it applies only to residential neighborhoods, Wayan.
Oh, I’d rather one space for moving crates than a whole block for a giant moving truck ;)
lord people – of course it’s obnoxious. but think for one second about if it were you moving a houseload of stuff. i’ve had the permits to reserve a space for a moving truck and then the assholes who think I”M being selfish park in the space. large moving van appears and has nowhere to park so ends up blocking traffick making even bigger mess for everyone. who do metrobloggers have to make everything about how the world is just out to inconvenience you because you are late for a freaking date?
The problem as I understand it, Ellie, is the fact that they were there for a week.
How many of us leisurely move our stuff out over a week? Not me. As nice as it would be, I understand that any space I take up on the street is space that is inconveniencing someone else. So I pack up and move as quickly as I can—because that’s what you do when you are a good neighbor.
It seems that the idea of street space as a public space/resource resonates with many of you. In which case you might understand how many of us find your sense of entitlement in regards to free parking on the street to be strangely inconsistent with your perception of this space as a public good. These folks may have their boxes on the street for a full week – that is 24 hours for seven days straight, or 168 hours in total. But if you park your car every night for only the 8 hours during which you sleep – then you use the same amount of the street space for your car in only 21 days, or for over 17 weeks a year. Somehow I imagine that you might park your car on the street for more than 8 hours a day, so check your grudges about the selfishness of the one-time box people at the door because you’ve got your own issues to deal with.
Nicely said, K-Dog. I agree that it seems weird that y’all are making a fuss about boxes, when a car is box with wheels. There is no difference and if the person got a permit to put their boxes there, then I don’t see a problem, except that aesthetically, big blue with yellow boxes don’t belong with vehicular colors du jour.
But does a car take up two parking spaces for a week without moving, on a metered section of street, without getting a parking ticket?
Thinking beyond just losing parking space for residents and visitors:
* how affected are the businesses that the boxes are in front of by having these boxes there? From the pic above, it looks like Tonic’s entrance is totally obscured and you wouldn’t know it was there except for its bright orange awnings.
* is the city losing potential revenue, since these are metered spaces or does the cost of the permit covers this for 5 days?
I can understand the indignity if the permit was for 30 days, but for 5 days, it’s not that big of a deal, unless the above two factors are severely affected by Big Blue Boxes.