The District is looking to boost its arsenal of automated traffic enforcement programs, this time to crack down on vehicles parked illegally in commercial zones.
The violations, often by on-demand delivery services like DoorDash, for-hire vehicles such as Uber and Lyft or package delivery trucks, can cause “cascading consequences” of safety and inconvenience, and the city doesn’t have the manpower to keep up.
The D.C. Department of Transportation last month issued a request for information seeking industry options for a “curbside monitoring system capable of capturing driver behavior and identifying parking violations using a complex set of business rules.” This system, likely a network of cameras and sensors, would add to the city’s portfolio of automated enforcement systems currently targeting speeders, red light and stop sign runners, school bus passers, and bus lane and through-truck violators.
Where there is curbside space designed for passenger loading or on-demand delivery, “users double-parked 44 percent of the time often as a result of others abusing the space,” per data collected by DDOT. When the agency established a pilot short-term parking program, only 30% of its users paid for parking in the zone. In one area of downtown, DDOT said, citing “collaborative research with outside entities,” parking was paid for less than half the time and many drivers weren’t being ticketed.
