Proponents hope legislation now before the D.C. Council will finally end the weekly friction between Sunday churchgoers and District residents over neighborhood parking.
But is it really the silver bullet? Probably not, observers say.
Under the bill, introduced last week by Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas, churches would develop neighborhood-centric parking plans allocating diagonal residential spaces to parishioners. The key to the proposal, Thomas said: The plans must be approved by the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and be the subject of a supporting petition circulated in the community.
“We hope this can be a model for not just the traffic patterns we have on Sundays around religious institutions, but also looking at our business corridors and how we can more efficiently put vehicles in those corridors on a temporary basis,” Thomas said.
Residents have long clashed with the District’s largest churches over parking, alleging that parishioners drive in from Maryland and double-park on neighborhood streets, trapping residents and usurping sparse spaces. The fight has been particularly pronounced in Logan Circle and Shaw.
A task force established by former Mayor Anthony Williams drafted a plan in 2006 that recommended tailoring Sunday parking to individual neighborhoods through angled parking, median parking, private garages, shuttle and valet services, carpooling and staggered worship hours. Some suggestions were implemented — angled parking on Vermont Avenue and Ninth Street, median parking on Rhode Island Avenue — but the tension between churches and residents still bubbles on a weekly basis.
Shiloh Baptist Church on Ninth Street Northwest no longer allows its churchgoers to double-park, said Alex Padro, a Shaw advisory neighborhood commissioner. But several other churches still do, he said, and Thomas’ bill “is certainly a move in the right direction.”
“We still have churches that have not gotten with the program,” Padro said.
Mayor Adrian Fenty announced early this year that the Metropolitan Police Department would enforce all parking laws seven days a week, including double-parking rules.
“Is it the solution? No,” Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, said of Thomas’ bill. “It is a dramatic step toward one.”
