Seemingly taking a cue from Uber, the District Department of Transportation will be testing out a value pricing strategy to reduce parking congestion, as the Washington Post first reported.
Starting next summer, if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself riding a car in the Chinatown/Penn Quarter area, where parkDC will be piloted, you might land on a jacked-up parking fare.
The program will try out several other strategies delineated in a parkDC presentation (between aptly named slides like “The Parking Ecosystem is Unbalanced”):
- A pay-by-space approach, where spaces are assigned a number that can be punched in at the meter
- Placebo blocks with no meters dedicated to cell phone payments
- Parking sensors to detect whether a space is occupied
- A website that will display real-time information on parking spot availability
Read the full DDOT presentation
And for a reminder on the horrors of parking in D.C. (illegal parking, double parking, delivery trucks, aggressive maneuvers!), watch this shaky study video commissioned by DDOT:
