If you're a frequent parker in Arlington, you may want to budget in some extra cash for a rate hike at parking meters. According to the Examiner, Arlington County officials are considering making some sweeping changes to the current system, such as extending the metered hours and raising the current flat rate of $1 per hour. Obviously, there's a tough balance to keep here for County officials - on the one hand, the Wilson Boulevard......

The District's Department of Public Works today begins using its new "SweeperCam" technology, those cameras attached to street sweepers that can take photos of illegally parked cars and issue parking citations to them. In a press release, the department says that for the next 45 days, illegally parked cars caught on the "SweeperCam" will receive warnings only. Regular tickets with fines attached will be issued beginning October 14, 2008. DPW officials stressed that the goal......

The D.C. Council was supposed to be on recess starting today, but they couldn't quite get through their packed legislative session Tuesday, so they'll be coming back for more on Thursday. Hopefully Carol Schwartz can stand being away from Rehoboth for a couple more days. One of the items they did get to on Tuesday was an amendment introduced by Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) that would establish a $75 fine......

Yesterday City Desk pointed us to the YouTube video above concerning something that always fires up District residents -- parking. The video in question creatively makes a point that's long been a reality for residents of Adams Morgan and its surrounding neighborhoods -- people who go out in Adams Morgan tend to park pretty much anywhere they want. As a resident of one of the nearby neighborhoods, I can attest to the fact that......

Seems like just about everything about driving a car in this city is becoming more expensive these days. WTOP reports that parking fees at both National and Dulles airports will go up on June 1. At National, regular daily parking will increase from $17 a day to $20 a day, while economy parking will go from $10 to $12 for 24 hours. Hourly and valet parking will stay the same. There will be another option......

If you're heading down to Nationals Park tonight to watch the team face the Mets at 7:10 p.m., you might like to know that you suddenly have a new option in terms of transportation: you can actually just drive and pay $15-$20 to park when you get there. WTOP first reported this policy change late on Monday. Before today, you had to be a season ticket holder or buy game day parking permits online beforehand......

The Examiner reports on a new bill before the D.C. Council that would levy a $25 per month tax on all private employee parking spaces. The legislation is the brainchild of Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham and At-large member Phil Mendelson, and is designed to discourage employees from driving in to work even though they have access to a parking space at their office. It's an interesting idea in theory. Last week when we......

Yeah, Zimmerman's walk-off was memorable. And, okay, the beer selection could use some sprucing up. (Where's the local flavor?) But, the real questions on our minds here at Transit on Thursday were as follows: 1) Did Metro work well? 2) Will it continue to work well throughout the summer? 3) Finally, how can it get better? To answer these questions, there were the big media reports, but they left us wanting a little bit......

DCist fanboy-in-chief Charles Gray tells us that Ryan Zimmerman found the zone for the Nats' stadium opener, swatting a tie-breaking walk-off home run for the win in the ninth. Woo! But Nationals fans — as well as residents and other visitors to the new stadium area — were less thrilled to find themselves in the Nats' new parking zone. According to WJLA, 103 cars were towed over the weekend from the area around Nationals Stadium.......

Ross Bradford lives in the 1300 block of Delaware Ave. SW, and recently received his very own visitor parking permit, part of the District's new pilot residential parking restriction program in the Southwest and Near Southeast neighborhoods around the new Nationals stadium. Bradford told us the visitor permit, pictured above, was sent to him by the D.C. Department of Transportation without him having to do anything. Each household in the designated neighborhoods gets a......

Both the Post and WTOP have stories this morning announcing the National Park Service's decision to close the tiny Tidal Basin parking lot during the National Cherry Blossom Festival this year. Talk about overdue ideas. Anyone who's been down to see the blossoms at peak hours over the last decade can tell you that the additional traffic caused by the yahoos who seem to think they'll be able to snag a spot in the lot,......

We were just forwarded what may be the worst, and somehow at the same time the absolute greatest, Metro ad campaign we've ever run across. The video above, uploaded to YouTube yesterday, is part of WMATA's efforts to make sure as many people as possible take public transportation to the new Nationals Park at the Navy Yard, instead of driving. Allow us to set the scene for you: Three lifeless Easter Peeps, all office......

D.C.'s annual St. Patrick Day’s Parade is this Sunday, March 16, beginning at noon. The MPD sent around a reminder about parking restrictions and street closures, so we're posting it here. No parking will be allowed on the following streets between the 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the day of the parade (Sunday): Constitution Avenue NW, between 6th Street and 23rd Street NW7th Street NW, between Independence Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue NW14th Street......

Here's a good question raised by WTOP's Adam Tuss: Should the shuttle that's supposed to take people who park at RFK on Nationals game days to the new stadium at the Navy Yard make a stop along the way? On the pro side is Ward 6 Council member Tommy Wells. Wells would ideally like to see the shuttle make one stop at 8th and G Streets NE SE, near the Barracks Row neighborhood, in......

We haven't yet gotten the official press release from the Department of Public Works, but the agency's online public calendar shows that residential street sweeping is set to resume on Monday, March 24. As happens every winter, street sweeping and the parking restrictions that come along with it were suspended on Nov. 30. Here's how DPW describes its street sweeping regime:Mechanical street sweeping is a weekly service in heavily trafficked residential sections of Wards 1,......

In the department of hey, that's a really friggin' good idea, Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham put up an announcement late yesterday that the D.C. Council unanimously passed an emergency bill Tuesday to create a pilot taxi zone in Adams Morgan.The pilot taxi zone will require taxis to report to a central location to pick up riders rather than drive through the streets to find their fares. Hack inspectors will be involved in enforcing......

Metro's board will be holding a full public hearing today on the future of the city's most circulated lines, the 30s. The current set of six routes run east to west along Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Avenues, and carry over 20,000 passengers a day from residential areas in Northwest and Southeast to downtown commercial districts - but unfortunately, the routes suffer from a lot of stops and gos along the way, stalling pick up times......

Whether it's the new baseball stadium or the Target in Columbia Heights, 2008 is shaping up to be the year of the great parking debate. As we've reported, D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) has floated a number of proposals to manage parking around the new stadium and surrounding neighborhoods, while Greater Greater Washington recently wrote that Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) has kicked off discussions on how best to handle parking for......

Short of making opening day at the new baseball stadium "Ride Metro Here and We'll Give You $100 Day," city officials and team owners are still trying to find a way to deal with what is likely to be a traffic and parking crush come March 29. According to the Post, the team is estimating that they will need 5,000 parking spaces for season ticket holders. Of those, 1,200 are being handled by the city,......

Good morning, Washington. If you experienced a power outage at some point on Sunday, you were not alone. Strong winds averaging close to 40 mph knocked out power to as many as 100,000 customers across the metro area yesterday. While not much ice or snow ever materialized during the weekend's storm, Sunday's chilly wind made for an uncomfortable time walking through downtown D.C. for many holiday shoppers -- we spotted at least one woman near......

The Post is reporting that in an 8-2 vote, Metro's finance committee has approved a series of fare hikes at their full meeting today. The plan they approved was the one recently offered by Maryland members of the board, which is less expensive for suburban customers who park and ride. The vote basically guarantees that the full board will approve the fare hikes later today. Here's how the new fares will break down: >> The......

This WJLA story, about a group of residents on the 1300 block of Quincy Street NW who all got parking tickets for street cleaning violations last week, would be just a normal amount of frustrating, instead of blood-boilingly infuriating, were it not for this little nugget:Pender went to the 4th district police headquarters to find our why he and his neighbors got tickets anyway. "I talked to him and said I got a ticket for......

Good morning, Washington. It turns out that House Pages don't need lecherous congressmen's help to make scandalous headlines: two have just gotten busted for inappropriate behavior in a House elevator. They've been dismissed, bringing the year's total fired pages to five — two others were caught shoplifting, and one was booted for fighting. Needless to say, it looks like the program — the oversight of which has been in turmoil — will be getting......

>> A non-rolling tennis ball catches a lot of parking tickets on Cliffbourne Place. [Marc Fisher] >> D.C. police are trying to identify a body found in the Tidal Basin. [NBC4] >> "A DC Team is in the Super Bowl again. The Beacon House Falcons are in Pop Warner Football’s Pee Wee Division Super Bowl on Saturday, December 8th at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex." [Notions Capital] >> The District government expects to......

You all said almost too much good stuff this past week. Here's a wrapup of some of the best comments, as well as the semi-prized best avatar and commenter name awards. Comment of the Week goes to frequent commenter Monkeyrotica, who doesn't like Council members complaining about closing schools: Maybe if parents weren't fleeing their poorly-run wards, they wouldn't be shutting their precious schools down. The Council has had DECADES and BILLIONS to fix the......

After a fire gutted Eastern Market last April, the stretch of 7th Street SE adjacent to the market building was closed off on weekends to accommodate vendors, construction of the temporary East Hall and reconstruction of the South Hall. In an interview on WTOP (link to audiostream) last week, Ward 6 Council member Tommy Wells said he wants to keep 7th Street that way. The Hill picked up the story on Wednesday, and the Hilleast......

The big day you've been waiting for with the excitement of a child all year is almost here -- the day that Santa Claus the Department of Public Works suspends residential mechanical street cleaning for the winter. Residents will be able to park freely without fear of being ticketed for being on the wrong side of the road after this Friday, Nov. 30, when “No parking/street cleaning” restrictions will be lifted. A date has not......

After what was thought to be a succesful surgery, Redskins safety Sean Taylor died earlier this morning in Florida. His wounds -- a gunshot to his femoral artery, causing significant blood loss -- proved to be too much for his body to recover from. He was shot in what police are calling a home invasion on Monday. In a statement posted on the team's website, owner Dan Snyder said, "This is the worst imagineable tragedy.......

We missed this when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but is it really ever too late to point and laugh at New Yorkers? We didn't think so. So, people are probably aware that Five Guys franchises are proliferating across the Eastern U.S. like nuclear weapons in central Asia. The greasy, peanut-laden fingers of our locally born burger stand have spread as far as Delafield, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; and Miami, Florida. They've even broken......

The rush to get out of D.C. to family Thanksgiving celebrations has already begun, but if you're still reading DCist, you're probably still at work and planning on leaving within the next 72 hours. Whether opening up that military airspace will really make a difference at Washington area airports remains to be seen, but WMATA has announced a special Thanksgiving weekend schedule that could stand to help out many of you trying to take public......