A few months ago, tipped by a reader, we got interested in some parking signs on M Street between 20th and 21st streets NW. These signs were in the area of one-hour parking meters and indicated that parking was limited to 15 minutes between the hours of 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. for the use of the (insert cutesy name here) Day Care Center.

The reader, and many looking at the signs, might have thought they were fakes that had been installed by the day care to scare off parkers so the center’s customers could more easily pick up their children. In fact, those signs were not fakes.

The city’s traffic division told us it does put up signs at day care centers around the city that include the name of the business, and at the city’s expense.

We were also told that the signs on M Street were being changed because that particular day care center with the cutesy name was moving. Well, the original reader has written back, and we have looked into the signs again. Turns out that the signs mentioning the name of the day care center have indeed been removed, but they have been replaced with even more signs.

This story continues below
Advertisement

Half of the spaces are within the limits of signs indicating that the area is a loading zone. Interesting in that they are nowhere near an entrance to the building.

The other signs restrict parking there to 15 minutes during much of the afternoon rush hour but without mention of a private enterprise being the rationale. The information on the meters indicates that they are for one-hour parking between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., contradicting the signs. The parking enforcement personnel on patrol say they enforce the information on the meters. The whole thing is a mess.

By the way, the original reader says that it looks like the day care center is still there based on the number of small children being put into car seats. Perhaps the city realized that using taxpayers’ money to promote a private enterprise isn’t in everyone’s best interest. Taking away a bunch of parking spaces from use by the public may not be such a good idea, either.

K Street traffic woes

We also mentioned the traffic signals on K Street near 25th Street that seem to be short-timing and resulted in a red-light enforcement camera there that was very busy as a result.

To the credit of the city’s Department of Transportation, it appears that something has been done. The timing of the lights has obviously been changed, because the queues for the lights are much shorter and the strobe for the red-light camera no longer goes off like the warning light in “The Andromeda Strain.”

An official from DDOT wrote me to say: “At most intersections in the city we reduce the cycle length during non rush-hour periods (where possible) to lessen the wait time for side-street vehicles and Pedestrians.

When we looked at 25th and K it was obvious that reducing the cycle length would not be advantageous because of the unique geometry of the intersection, and the multiple signal phases serviced. Our solution was to maintain a cycle length of 100 seconds which would proportionally increase the amount of green time for all approaches.”

It seems to be working. Thank you.