Greater Greater Washington’s Michael Perkins has an interesting thesis. He says that instead of shutting down at 6:00 p.m., parking meters in Arlington should run after dark in neighborhoods like Clarendon, Crystal City and Rosslyn.
Perkins says such a move would free up more street parking in Arlington’s business districts at night. It would also encourage more people to take transit, he says.
Changing the hours would require the county board to change the code.
What do you think?
Advanced Towing is either a hated predatory towing company or a very effective solution for ridding parking lots of illegally-parked vehicles, depending on your perspective.
The company’s drivers will watch over restricted parking spaces and wait for some unfortunate schmo to park there and walk off the owner’s property, at which point they snatch the car and drive off. They do this at the Four Mile Run branch of the Virginia DMV, at the Westmont Shopping Center on Columbia Pike, and elsewhere around Arlington. Needless to say, it has not won them many friends.
They have earned themselves a steady stream of hate on Yelp. They have been the subject of a not-safe-for-work screed by a prominent local blogger. And they’re often involved in disputes that have to be settled by police.
The dispute that led to the photo above happened last week when a driver thought his car was damaged by an Advanced tow truck. Police concluded that it was preexisting damage.
One day later, a man contacted TBD and ARLnow.com after his car was towed from the same private lot adjacent to the DMV. He accused Advanced of using a “decoy” to attract people to the spaces, then threatening him when he tried to warn others. “Aggressive towing, intimidation at Arlington DMV parking lot,” TBD’s headline read.
This all brings up the inevitable question: Is Advanced unethical? Are they preying on unsuspecting drivers without regard to circumstance? Or are they delivering justice to people who ignore no parking signs?
Home Alone in Rosslyn — Thanks to a summer rainstorm a few weeks ago, tomorrow will be the last day of the Rosslyn Outdoor Film Festival. Home Alone will be shown in the usual spot in Rosslyn’s Gateway Park. The 1990 classic family comedy (“without the family”) will play on the big screen starting at dusk.
Satellite Truck is Still Parked in Arlington — A mysterious satellite truck, which we’ve written about two times before, continues to pester residents in north Arlington. A tipster tells us the truck is parked on Fairfax Drive near Arlington Traditional School. It has been there at least a week.
Animal Welfare League Marks Near-Completion — With work on a new addition to the Arlington Animal Welfare League’s Shirlington facility nearly complete, employees and pet lovers gathered Tuesday night to celebrate. More from the Sun Gazette.
Flickr pool photo by Jeff Costlow
Everybody knows that parking enforcement is strict in Arlington. So strict, apparently, that even this Crown Vic with an Arlington Police vest inside got ticketed on Clarendon Boulevard, near the Whole Foods.
We’ve also heard of federal government vehicles getting ticketed.
Unanswered question: If it was indeed a police vehicle, will Arlington use tax dollars to pay the fine to themselves?
Less than two weeks ago we warned you about the misleading parking meters in front of 1400 North Uhle Street, which seemed to suggest that you could park there on Saturday mornings. Which you can — until 5:00 a.m., when your car gets towed and you get fined (the result of parking restrictions for the Courthouse farmer’s market).
In any event, it seems that someone was listening. The meters have new stickers on them that indicate that parking is enforced Monday through Friday. The new stickers originally said there’s free parking on Saturday and Sunday, but the “SAT.” is crossed off.
Question: Is that enough? Or should there be a sticker on the meter itself indicating that parking is restricted and towing enforced on Saturday mornings (in addition to the “reserved for farmer’s market” signs on either side of the building)?
More on Bayou Bakery — On Tuesday we broke the news that David Guas finally picked out the perfect spot for his Bayou Bakery concept: the old Camille’s space in Courthouse. Now the venerable Tom Sietsema has scooped us and a half dozen other local reporters who had been waiting patiently for an interview about the Louisiana-inspired cafe. Guas tells Sietsema that the Bakery will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and will feature, among other things “muffalettas, layer cakes, root beer floats, blue plate specials,” and a beer selection.
The End of Free Parking in Clarendon? — Starting August 31, the Department of Human Services parking garage in Clarendon will no longer be free to the public between 6:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. With DHS moved out of the building, a private parking lot operator will be taking over. Even though garage parking rates in Clarendon are reasonable, the loss of free parking could result in even more cars coming into the Lyon Village neighborhood looking for street parking at night. More from TBD.
More Trader Joe’s Rumors — That persistent rumor that Trader Joe’s will be coming to Clarendon? We’re now hearing it too. And for everyone’s convenience, we’ve picked out the perfect spot for a new Trader Joe’s. Check out the unoccupied 10,319 square foot retail space in the Clarendon Center project (space #9). It could be a great location for a grocery store, don’t you think? But a higher-up with the developer denied that Trader Joe’s has any plans to move in.
Flickr pool photo by MichaelTRuhl
Do you want to get your car towed to a spot 50 feet away and get fined $50 for the privilege? Then by all means park in front of this office building in Courthouse overnight tonight.
The reason for the towing may not be a surprise to patrons of Saturday morning’s Courthouse farmers market. But it is a surprise to many people who park in the far southwest corner of the large county parking lot Friday night, not looking for the special farmers market parking notice on either side of the seven otherwise unremarkable metered spaces.
Nothing on the meters indicates that marking is restricted on Saturday. In fact, the meter indicates that parking is enforced from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays, when it is in fact reserved for the farmers market from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Want to fight the ticket? Well, you can do that if you can get out of work for the better part of a weekday morning — and if you’re willing to pay $61 in court costs if you lose the appeal.
Do yourself a favor, avoid parking in front of 1400 North Uhle Street tonight.
Disclosure: Yes, this was written from first-hand experience. And yes, I’ve already paid the fine. This post was written in the hopes that others won’t make the same costly error. For the record, there were at least two other cars that suffered the same fate as mine on this particular weekend.
A woman fell several stories from the Ballston Public Parking Garage Thursday night, landing in front of a car that was about to exit the garage onto Glebe Road. The woman was alive when she was taken to the hospital but later succumbed to her injuries, police said.
The fall happened around 8:30 p.m. A police spokesperson was unaware of any witnesses other than the driver of the car.
Police are still investigating the circumstances of the fall. Suicide is the most likely scenario that investigators are examining, we’re told.
The County-owned garage is located on North Glebe Road next to Ballston Common Mall.
Drivers and cyclists in the Courthouse/Clarendon area should expect a bumpy ride on Wilson Boulevard over the next couple of days. Wilson has been milled between North Barton Street and North Fillmore Street ahead of a scheduled repaving.
The repaving is expected to begin on Thursday, depending on weather conditions and logistical issues.
Later this week, another stretch of Wilson Boulevard — from North Highland Street to Washington Boulevard, near the Clarendon Metro Station — is scheduled to be milled, with repaving to follow. Next week the same work will take place on Washington Boulevard from Pershing Drive to North Highland Street, according to Department of Environmental Services spokesperson Karen Acar.
Drivers should expect parking restriction in the area during the construction.
At least a half dozen cars had windows shattered in the parking lot of the Shirlington Bus Station Thursday afternoon. It’s unclear whether the breakage was the result of a brazen daytime vandalism or whether it was caused by the strong storms that split trees in half just blocks away from the station.
In some cases the glass appeared to have exploded outward in small pieces, which does not seem like a likely pattern for vandalism. On the other hand, some cars seemed to escape the damage and the large glass panes in the bus station appeared intact.
The bus station is at the bottom of a long hill that leads up to Fairlington, the Arlington neighborhood hardest hit by the storms.
A police spokesperson did not have any information about the shattered glass.
One theory is that the storm brought with it a sudden, violent change in air pressure that caused the windows to “explode.” If you have any other theories as to what happened, we’re all ears.
Last week we gently poked fun at whoever called police to complain about a satellite truck that was illegally parked at Park Drive and South George Mason Drive. Well, guess what? The truck is still there, and people are still complaining about it.
Police received another call about the truck last night at 6:00. We checked it out and found not a single vehicle parked near it. We noted that the four hour zone parking restriction has already ended, so at that time the truck was actually legally parked.
Also of interest: There were no parking tickets visible on the truck’s windshield.
We called the company that operates the truck, PSSI Global Services, to find out why such an expensive piece of equipment has been parked on a random residential street for so long. The individual on the phone said a company representative would call back later that night. That, of course, never happened.
So the mystery of why the truck is parked there, and why people are so bothered by it that they’re still calling police, continues.
