Has Anyone at USDOT Read Donald Shoup?

In a nod to the late, great Donald Shoup, Kea Wilson argues that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s free parking initiative will “encourage driving by employees who otherwise would take transit — and inflict more congestion, emissions, and traffic violence on surrounding communities.”

Parking spots at the USDOT’s Washington office that once cost $155 per month will now be free and distributed through an annual lottery — including spaces once reserved for people with disabilities, carpoolers, and people who use their vehicles for work. “That policy, which may violate federal law, also runs runs counter to the District's own policies to encourage more sustainable commuting and curb the deleterious effects of cars in the nation's dense, transit-rich nation's capital,” Wilson asserts.

According to Daniel Herriges of the Parking Reform Network, “There are a handful of places in North America that basically would cease to function if everybody who works there drove in every day ... and I would say that the core of Washington, D.C. is absolutely one of those places.”

Although a 2022 law mandates that D.C. employers with over 20 employees provide parking cash-outs to employees who don’t drive to work, companies and organizations with their own parking lots, like USDOT, were exempt — “removing a powerful incentive for employers in transit-rich neighborhoods to stop offering parking to anyone and putting their lots to more productive use.”