Quotes: On the future of parking in Washington, D.C.

“We are swimming in the tide of change, and people don’t even know it.”

– Harriet Tregoning, the chief planner of Washington, D.C.

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A view of the future of parking in this piece in the Washington Post:

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“Private car ownership is probably in its waning years, at least in urban areas like D.C.,” said Karina Ricks, an urban planner and former associate director at the District Department of Transportation. “Where in generations past it was seen as a great liberator to have a car, to have freedom of movement, the new generation really views car ownership as more of a burden than a liberator.” …

“Personal mobility has been replaced by personal mobility on the Web,” said Jim Wangers, a legendary marketer of the Pontiac GTO muscle car in 1964. “It’s a whole lot cheaper; it’s a whole lot more convenient. There’s sociability without the shortcomings.” …

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The number of miles everyone drove in the District dropped by 7.7 percent in six years, and the number of households that don’t own a car has climbed to 38.5 percent. Two decades ago, two-thirds of the nation’s 18-year-olds had driver’s licenses. Now it’s a sliver more than half. …

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… by the end of the 21st century, parking garages may go the way of the horse stables that were an omnipresent part of the city 100 years ago. …

The District made a critical step that gave downtown a more elegant face than many cities. It limited the amount of floor space that can be constructed above ground on every piece of property. D.C. said that above-ground parking would count against that floor space … Voila. District parking garages disappeared below street level.

An above-ground space adds $15,000 to the cost of construction, Brian O’Looney, an urban design architect at the Silver Spring firm Torti Gallas and Partners, said, and an underground space costs as much as $30,000.

“It costs $15,000 to build a kitchen and $7,000 to build a bathroom, but then you’re requiring the same unit to have $50,000 worth of parking? It’s really stupid,” he said. …

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Though on-demand cars and bicycles have relieved the need to own a car, an even more momentous change may be in the offing: autonomous vehicles. How soon will driver-less taxis pull up to collect and deliver people around downtown D.C.? …

“You won’t need so much parking, because there won’t be so many private autos you need to store,” Ricks said. “There will be more sharing of the parking resource. If we’re really doing car-sharing, one vehicle can take the place of, on average, 16 vehicles, so we only need one-sixteenth of the parking places in the city.”  …

“Shared cars might be driven 95 percent of the time and parked 5 percent of the time. That’s clearly where we’re headed,” Tregoning said. “If the 95-5 happens, whole streets that now have parking on them won’t need it. We’ll have wider sidewalks. We’ll have more bike parking. It will be really lovely.”