parking

Neighborhood Wants County to Delay Parking Restrictions

By ARLnow.com

The Lyon Park Citizens Association is asking the county board to defer plans to restrict parking on part of Edgewood Street “pending a review of current County parking policy.”

County staff notified residents that they intended to restrict parking to one side Edgewood Street between 1st Road and 2nd Road after finding that some fire trucks are too wide to fit down the narrow street with cars parked on both sides. As we reported after the Feb. 12 board meeting, members of the board seemed sympathetic to the association’s request that the restrictions to be put on hold until the county and neighbors could come to a mutually agreeable solution.

In a letter to County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman, LPCA President Natalie Roy makes it clear that the association views the parking question as an issue of county-wide importance. Roy says the group is worried about how the county plans to implement restrictions on other narrow streets.

“There are numerous streets similar to Edgewood in Arlington that are too narrow for a ladder truck – why single out Edgewood Street at this time?” she asks. “The parking policy should be reviewed immediately to arrive at a more objective, cohesive, defendable, and democratic approach to governing parking within the County.”

While acknowledging that Edgewood Street is indeed too narrow for a ladder truck to navigate, Roy suggested that the trucks may be less costly to change than the streets.

“To be clear, the LPCA is concerned about safety first,” Roy writes. “As opposed to re-engineering streets throughout the entire County, it might prove more cost-effective and less disruptive to explore acquisition of different emergency vehicle.”

See the full letter, after the jump.

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Trees to Be Added to Narrower Pentagon City Street

By ARLnow.com

Newly-narrowed South Joyce Street in Pentagon City is losing a few parking spaces to make way for trees.

Over the winter, crews narrowed the portion of Joyce Street from 15th Street to 16th Street. A sidewalk was added to the side of the road facing Virginia Highlands Park, and the width of the street was reduced from 40 feet to about 35 feet.

The changes were intended as traffic calming measures. Narrower streets, the county says, encourage drivers to slow down.

To slow traffic down even more, Arlington has added six car-length planters — three on either side of the street. Trees will be planted in the planters, which each take up what was once a parking space.

“They serve to visually narrow the roadway on a very long stretch that is not interrupted by intersections,” said Traffic Engineering and Operations Bureau Chief Wayne Wentz.

Wentz said that while one side of the street has cars parked on it throughout the day, the other side sometimes lacks parked cars. The empty parking spaces, in turn, make the street appear wider and result in people speeding up. The planters, Wentz said, will do the job of calming traffic even when parked cars aren’t present.

Wentz noted that the roadwork actually added two parking spots to South Joyce Street, so the net loss of parking is only four spots. But one resident worried that park-goers may soon be forced to leave their cars in the adjacent neighborhood.

“Those barriers on the side take up parking spots that fill up quickly during softball season!” said the resident. “I live at South Joyce and 20th and you can bet neighbors will be complaining about increased parking in their neighborhood.”

The construction was paid for by money set aside by the developer of the nearby Pentagon Row shops.

“The changes to Joyce Street were actually development conditions of Pentagon Row,” Wentz said.

Wentz expects the trees to be planted by mid-April. The county’s arborist will decide which type of tree will be planted. In addition to the six planters on the side of the road, road crews also added a planter in the middle of the road at a pedestrian crossing.

County Tries to Balance Safety With Parking in Lyon Park

By ARLnow.com



(Updated at 4:10 p.m.) Arlington County wants to put residents on a car-free diet, but a spat over on-street parking in Lyon Park shows that residents with cars still have plenty of pull with the county board.

The county’s streets bureau, responding to a complaint from a trash collector, determined that a curvy, two-block stretch of North Edgewood Street is too narrow. With cars parked on either side, firefighters brought in to test the width did not have enough room to open the bins on either side of their fire engine.

Acting upon the results of the test, the streets bureau sent notice to residents that they were planning on restricting parking to one side of the street. But residents fought back and, this weekend, seemed to get some cover from the county board.

Lyon Park Civic Association President Natalie Roy spoke before the board and asked why the county has not found fault with the street’s width until now. She said that elderly residents whose houses lack driveways rely on street parking. Residents tried to create an alternative plan for dealing with the situation, she added, but that county staff made “Draconian” changes to it.

Most board members were sympathetic to the parking concerns.

“The fire truck can be a once in several year occurrence,” said County Board Vice Chair Mary Hynes. “I don’t want a solution for the once every five year event. I want solutions that make livability on this street reasonable.”

“If safety is such a priority, why do we wait until a complaint?” board member Jay Fisette asked, pointing out that there are plenty of other county streets that could potentially be considered too narrow.

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Shirlington Harris Teeter Gets Parking Meters

By ARLnow.com

The Harris Teeter in Shirlington is adding meters to its reserved parking spaces.

The spaces, located on the ground floor of an adjacent parking garage, are often full, leading to complaints to Harris Teeter management. Even though the spaces are reserved for grocery customers and limited to one hour, an employee tells us that drivers often flout the rules by parking in the spaces and heading to other stores.

The new meters are expected to “go live” on Saturday. Much like the meters at the Harris Teeter in Pentagon City, the Shirlington meters will have a button that will give drivers an hour of free parking. Coins will not be accepted.

Currently, the Shirlington Harris Teeter does not actively enforce its parking rules. We’re told that at least at first, the time limits on the meters will likely not be enforced, either. However, that could eventually change depending on how effective the meters are as a deterrent.

A number of people have emailed us with questions about the meters.

“If you haven’t reported it, I hope you’ll consider doing so,” one reader said. “Your readers who patronize Shirlington Village will want to be informed that parking there is about to become more costly and less convenient.”

Alas, the meters will be free and the parking rules will remain the same, at least according to people who work at the store.

What’s Up With the Back-In Parking Spaces in Courthouse?

By ARLnow.com

A reader, Christine, wrote in to ask about a parking ticket she recently received in Courthouse. Here’s her story:

I’m writing because I’d like to find out if any of your other readers have had the same issue I ran into last week. I received a $50 parking ticket for pulling front-end first into an angled parking space in Courthouse. These are the spots right next to the big AMC lot (cannot remember what street). Apparently the parking spaces were “Back-in Only”, which I failed to notice (admittedly this is my own fault). What I don’t understand is why Arlington is charging me $50 for pulling into a spot facing the wrong direction?! It’s not as if I was parking in a zone I didn’t have a permit for, or parked over a line taking up two spaces. It also seems like a pretty easy mistake to make, considering the street is 2-way and there is only parking on one side.

I’m not saying I don’t deserve a ticket (though I believe a warning would have been more appropriate considering this whole “back-in only” idea is not exactly prevalent), but $50 just seems insane.

We reached out to Arlington County Department of Environmental Services spokesperson Shannon Whalen McDaniel for the answer to why the spaces are back-in only. Here’s her response:

It is a safety issue. Back-in spaces are generally safer because of improved visibility when leaving the space. On 14th Street, which has a slope to it, safety is further enhanced because the cars would roll into the curb if the brakes failed.

Is a $50 fine too much, or does safety take precedence?

Update on 1/13/11 — WUSA 9 did a follow-up story to this article. Check it out here.

Crime Report: Towing and Parking Assaults

By ARLnow.com

Parking can be a frustrating thing. If parking is sparse, finding that one parking spot can turn into a competition. And if you park in the wrong spot, getting towed is certainly not very fun.

Should you should find yourself in such a situation, however, you should remain calm. Otherwise, if you lose your cool, you could wind up in handcuffs.

ASSAULT AND BATTERY-ARREST 12/31/10, 4000 block of N. 5th Street. On December 31 at 5 pm, a man assaulted a tow truck driver and broke a glass window at the towing property. Steven McClinchey, 48, of Arlington, was charged with Assault and Battery and Destruction of Property.

ASSAULT AND BATTERY-ARREST 01/02/11, 3700 block of Columbia Pike. On January 2 at 4 pm, a man assaulted a woman regarding an argument over a parking space. Barahona Marquez, 40, of Arlington, was charged with Assault and battery. He was released on a summons.

The rest of this week’s Arlington County crime report, after the jump.

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Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

County No Longer Offering iParks — The company that makes the iPark electronic parking pass has stopped manufacturing the device due to financial problems. That has prompted Arlington County to stop selling iParks, pending the company’s effort to stay in business. More from TBD.

O’Leary, Morroy Announce Reelection Bid — Arlington County Treasurer Frank O’Leary and Commissioner of Revenue Ingrid Morroy, both Democrats, announced their bids for reelection at last night’s Arlington County Democratic Committee meeting. See the video from Blue Virginia.

Arlington Man Indicted for Bomb Threats — The 25-year-old Arlington View resident who, according to the FBI, threatened to bomb Georgetown streets and Metro trains on Facebook has been indicted by a federal grand jury. More from WTOP.

Learn More About Redistricting in Virginia — The League of Women Voters of Arlington will be holding a public forum tonight on the upcoming redistricting process in Virginia. The forum will take place from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association building, located at 4301 Wilson Boulevard in Ballston. Free parking is available in the building after 5:30.

Free Commercial Parking Bonanza Isn’t Just for Trucks

By ARLnow.com

Earlier this week we reported that some residents were upset with loophole in Arlington’s parking code that allows commercial trucks to park for extended periods of time in front of schools, libraries and other county properties.

But trucks aren’t the only hulking masses taking up space on the side of local roads. Here’s what one peeved resident wrote us this morning:

Storage pods are very popular nowadays with all the moving that goes on in Arlington, but usually they are picked up in a few days and require a county permit. This pod has been on 1st Road South in front of Butler Holmes Park for over three months. We have called the Boxcart company, and were told they would pick it up. They didn’t, and why would they – they are getting free storage of the pod courtesy of Arlington. We have called the county twice. They said they would look into it because they should be charging a fee to Boxcart – much more interested in revenue generation than getting this storage unit off our street. They didn’t even do that, as the storage unit is still sitting there with no permit.

Should Big Trucks Be Parking In Front of Schools and Libraries?

By ARLnow.com

Truck drivers are taking advantage of a loophole in Arlington’s zoning laws that allows them to park for extended periods of time in residential neighborhoods, provided they park next to a county-owned property.

Per Arlington County code, boats, boat trailers and commercial vehicles (defined by Virginia law as a vehicle over 12,000 pounds) are prohibited from parking on the side of a street next to property zoned for residential use — except when unloading/loading or performing services. Motor homes and camping trailers are prohibited from parking in a residential zone for a period of more than five consecutive days.

But as many drivers of such vehicles have figured out, the law does not apply to the sides of streets abutting property zoned as “special” — which includes schools, libraries, community centers, parks and other county-owned property. As a result, the curbs next to some county properties have become a free parking lot of sorts for big trucks.

Parked trucks have been a steady source of complaints to the police department, as well as an acute source of irritation and concern to some residents.

“With an overall heightened sense of  awareness  for large trucks carrying dangerous items, it is funny that this loophole exists that allows large trucks to park next to government buildings,” said Dennis McGarry, who is active in the Highland Park-Overlee Knolls Civic Association. “You would think on that issue alone it would prompt someone to speak up and change the way the law reads.”

McGarry provided us with photos of trucks parked in front of Swanson Middle School (top) and Westover Library (bottom).

“Both of these trucks have lived in our neighborhood for about two years now,” McGarry said. “Both have been sitting in those parking spaces for weeks without being moved.”

County ordinances allow vehicles left unattended for more than ten days to be considered “abandoned” and towed, as long as the vehicles are parked in front of a property other than that of the vehicle’s owner.

McGarry added that there are numerous additional examples of trucks that consistently parked in “special” zoned areas.

While special zone parking is free, trucks that park illegally in a residential zone are subject to a $25 to $100 fine.

County Government Holiday Closures

By ARLnow.com

With the exception of limited ART bus service, virtually every county government office you can think of will be closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day, both of which fall on a Saturday this year.

Likewise, while trash collection and some bus service will be operational on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, but just about everything else county-related — including libraries, courts and schools — will be closed.

The good news: parking meters will not be enforced on Dec. 24, 25, 31 and Jan. 1. Happy holidays, indeed.

See the full closure list here.

Pre-Thanksgiving Parking Woes at Clarendon Whole Foods

By ARLnow.com

Despite worries about long lines and delays, catching a flight at Reagan National Airport was a relative breeze this morning. Parking at the Clarendon Whole Foods, on the other hand, is a disaster zone.

The heavy volume of shoppers stocking up for Thanksgiving dinner is overwhelming the five (count ’em) neon-vested parking attendants who are currently working the lot.

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