Parking in Georgetown is a perennial topic of discussion. But often left out of these discussions is hard data. Thankfully the city has finally collected this data and recently shared it with the community. The purpose of the exercise is to inform any discussions regarding reforming how we handle on-street parking. But the data is fascinating regardless. Here it is:
- There are 11,095 residents in Georgetown
- There are 5,957 cars registered in Georgetown
- Which means 1.86
cars per person and 1.6 cars per address (update: see comment below regarding this seemingly incorrect ratio)people per cars. (Update to the update: the city seems to have flipped the ratio) - One resident has 7 cars registered to him or her
- There are 5,720 on-street parking spaces in Georgetown
- There are about 3,500 off-street parking spots in Georgetown (excluding public parking garages)
- There are 4,378 residential parking permits issued to Georgetown residents (which implies that roughly 1,600 cars don’t have Zone 2 stickers)
- There are only 4,096 RPP spaces (i.e. spaces that allow Zone 2 parking 24/7)
- So that means there are roughly 300 more cars with Zone 2 stickers than there are Zone 2 spots (many of these probably have off-street parking)
- On average there are 815 RPP spots vacant
- That is roughly 20% of the supply
- But roughly 12% of blocks were on average full
- There are 8 spaces designated for a specific handicap permit (i.e. right outside their house)
- Four spaces have been repurposed for bike parking
That’s a lot of super valuable information! In short, there’s a decent balance between the number of spaces and the number of RPP cars. But that gets thrown out of whack when people (either employees or visitors) come to the neighborhood. That comports with GM’s experience. At night and early in the morning, his block is normally only about 70-80% full. But come 9:00 am, it’s more like 90-95% full, with lots of Maryland and Virginia license plates replacing the 50% or so of residents who drive their car in the morning.
Lots to chew over.
I think the math is wrong if there are more people than cars.
Those ratios are from the city. I think what it means is that of people who have registered cars at all, they register 1.86 cars per person. This would imply that only 3,203 people are on the books having registered a car. This sounds believable, since families will typically have just one person on the registration.
But that’s just a guess and either way I agree it’s a bit misleading.
No wait, I think the city just had the ratio upside down, because if you divide the number of people by the number of cars, you get 1.86.
What about these free 2 move cars that appeared out of nowhere?
Max
Maxwell Rabin Associate Broker TTR Sotheby’s International Realty 1206 30th Street NW Washington DC 20007 +1.202.669.7406 mrabin@ttrsir.com
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