MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3
with city officials.
“A ll of us have a shared incen-
tive to work with cities to really
help them rethink how curbs can
be used as flexible and dynamic
spaces rather than be preserved
for parking,” Boman said.
David Guernsey, president of
Dulles-based Guernsey, said D.C.
officials could help most by re-
quiring new buildings to have
larger loading docks and older
buildings to be retrofitted with
off-street delivery areas.
A curb space reservation sys-
tem might help his company’s
100 drivers who deliver office
supplies daily, he said, but he’s
concerned about how reserva-
tions would be enforced.
“They’d have to make sure that
time frame is ours,” Guernsey
said, “and no one else will be in
that spot.”
The nine curbFlow locations
are: the 1200 block of First Street
SE, 1200 block of H Street NE,
400 block of Eighth Street SE,
1100 block of Fourth Street SW,
300 block of Tingey Street SE,
200 block of Third Street SE, 700
block of Maine Avenue SW, 1400
block of 20th Street NW, 1000
block of Wisconsin Avenue near
M Street NW.
[email protected]every six years.
Ivanov said researchers p lan to
test sensors in loading zones to
tell delivery drivers in real time,
via an app, when space is open or
likely to become available.
Helping commercial drivers
find room to park and speed up
their deliveries, Ivanov said, is
more effective than handing out
tickets for double-parking.
“You can’t j ust put the hammer
down if people need a certain
amount of time to do their job,”
she said.
Those competing for the curb
say they want to work with cities.
A study by transportation con-
sultant Fehr & Peers that Uber
funded found that cities could
make their curbs more “produc-
tive” by consolidating commer-
cial loading zones to accommo-
date larger trucks and replacing
street parking with more loading
and pickup areas. Cities also
could allot curb space differently,
such as for deliveries in the
mornings and afternoons, for
passenger pickups and drop-offs
during busy commuting periods
and for resident parking over-
night, the study found.
Emilie Boman, head of public
policy for Uber Eats, said the
company is sharing its findingseager to see what the curbFlow
study finds.
“We need a better idea of
what’s going on at curbs before
we can think about how to regu-
late them,” said Stephen Crim,
the county’s parking manager. “I
think everyone is excited about
the D.C. project.”
Researchers at the University
of Washington’s Urban Freight
Lab are focused on two potential
solutions: shrinking the amount
of time delivery vehicles spend at
the curb and reducing the fre-
quency of “failed” deliveries,
such as when no one is home to
sign for a package, that require a
return trip.
Barbara Ivanov, the lab’s direc-
tor, said researchers are install-
ing package lockers in public
spaces and buildings in Seattle
and nearby Bellevue to prevent
delivery drivers from having to
schlep packages up elevators. A
recent test of a storage locker
inside a 62-floor building in
downtown Seattle, she said, cut
delivery trucks’ average parking
time from 25 minutes to six
minutes.
That time adds up, she said,
when online sales have been
growing by about 15 percent an-
nually, or nearly doubling aboutyear.
Cities that use a reservation
system long-term could charge
user fees to pay for it and to
recoup any revenue lost from
eliminating parking meters, a
curbFlow spokeswoman said.
Ta xis and ride-hailing companies
aren’t permitted to use curbFlow
during the test phase.
But during the testing, curb-
Flow representatives also won’t
have any authority to prevent
drivers from idling or parking
without a reservation — some-
thing that company officials say
would b e worked out before a full
implementation.
“Cities are looking for solu-
tions that cannot only measure
what’s happening at the curb but
also do something about it,” Va-
habzadeh said. “A lot of cities
have thrown their hands up in
the air... but some are proac-
tively looking for solutions.”
The curb shortage is also hit-
ting suburbs.
In Montgomery County, offi-
cials in downtown Bethesda are
exploring the possibility of limit-
ing deliveries to certain times
and converting some street park-
ing spaces to commercial loading
zones.
Arlington officials say they arezones. Making space more readi-
ly available, they say, would cut
emissions from delivery vehicles
having to idle or circle the block
as they wait for parking, relieve
traffic backed up behind double-
parkers and make streets safer
for everyone who must swerve
around them.
The study comes as the Dis-
trict and other cities seek more
efficient ways to use their curb
space — their hottest real estate
— amid an explosion in ride-hail-
ing trips by Uber and Lyft, online
shopping and on-demand food
deliveries.
“They’re all c hanging how peo-
ple use the curb and how cities
are doing business,” said DDOT
Director Jeff Marootian. “We’ve
heard reports of people double-
or even triple-parking, which is
definitely a safety hazard.”
How the curb is used is also
changing. Space once dominated
by cars parking for a couple
hours is now in demand by doz-
ens to hundreds of delivery and
ride-hailing drivers aiming to
pull in and out in a few minutes,
or even seconds. Meanwhile, cit-
ies trying to improve public
health and ease traffic conges-
tion are devoting more curb
space to bike and bus lanes,
bike-sharing docks and scooter
parking.
“So many things happen curb-
side,” s aid Leona Agouridis, exec-
utive director of the Golden Tri-
angle Business Improvement
District downtown. “In the past
five to 10 years, the nature of
what’s happening on the curb has
changed astronomically.”
The curb crunch, experts say, i s
expected to become even more
acute as grocery deliveries take
off and autonomous vehicles be-
gin to demand their share. The
problem is so widespread that
the Metropolitan Washington
Council of Governments is plan-
ning a regional forum for local
officials to share ideas.
“The demand for the curb is
going up and up and up, and
there’s only so much of it,” said
Jon Schermann, a COG transpor-
tation planner who specializes in
freight issues.
CurbFlow founder Ali Va-
habzadeh calls his reservation
system “an air traffic control
tower for city curb space.” The
District is the first to test it, he
said, and he expects to have five
more cities trying it out later thisPARKING FROM B1Imagine a New
Yorker c artoon.
The setting: a
desert (sand,
cactus). A
bedraggled man
crawls on his
hands and knees.
One arm holds a
phone aloft.
“WiFi,” t he man
croaks. “WiFi... ”
That w as me last week, minus
the desert.
We’d r ented a cabin for a few
days on the Shenandoah River. It
was me, My L ovely Wife, our
daughters and our y ounger
daughter’s r oommate. This was
supposed to be a getaway with
nothing to distract us but the
burble of the water, the wind i n
the trees, a stack of novels a nd a
1,000-piece p uzzle.
But when you get away, there
are certain t hings you don’t w ant
to get away f rom totally. Oxygen,
for example. A nd, it turns out, our
modern oxygen: an Internet
connection.
We t ried to resist, we really did.
What’s the point of going on amini-vacation if you spend it
doing what you d o at h ome:
checking your email from your
bed, mindlessly scrolling through
Instagram, tweeting a bon mot?
We w ere helped in this regard
by the cabin itself, which, t he
owner t old us, had spotty
connectivity. The WiFi was n ot
dependable, he said. And
whatever y ou do, don’t s tream
anything. The house would s oon
hit its data cap.
And so when we arrived
Sunday afternoon, I put my p hone
on the dresser and tried to be in
the moment. But that moment
was undercut by foreboding. I still
had to write two columns a nd
send them to The Washington
Post’s r avenous content
management system. And my
wife, Ruth , had scheduled some
phone calls with her office. And
our daughter Beatrice was
technically working remotely,
keeping in contact w ith her
London office.
I don’t l ike myself when I’m
jonesing for WiFi. I become needy,
distracted, irritable. I become
fixated on nothing but where tofind my n ext dose of sweet, sweet
25 Mbps.
I’ve been going to Europe a lot
the last couple of years for
vacation, bringing my iPhone
with me. Before I go, The Post
adjusts the phone plan — it pays
for it, after all — hobbling t he
phone so I don’t r ack up expensive
per-minute f ees.
I thus find myself in a constant
state of WiFi anxiety, afraid I
won’t b e able to do things that I
was perfectly capable o f doing
before the smartphone was
invented: find the opening hours
of a museum, make a restaurant
reservation, locate a landmark,
rendezvous with a family
member.
For example, I remember t here
used to be these colorful pieces of
paper imprinted with miniature
likenesses o f a city’s layout, right
down t o the s treets, parks and
subway stations. Whatever
happened to those?
Often I’ll arrive f or dinner at
the house of a friend I haven’t
seen i n ages and announce:
“Lovely to see y ou. A re you the
network called‘DrWhoTa rdis789’? What’s your
WiFi password?”
I hate myself, but I can’t h elp
myself.
The WiFi worked for the first day
at t he river cabin but conked out on
Day Two. That’s w hy I was
surprised to see Beatrice tapping
away o n her laptop.
“I’m hotspotting,” s he said.
I didn’t k now what that was. She
explained it — use your cellphone
as a portable WiFi node — but it
didn’t d o me any good. My p hone
wasn’t g etting a cell signal. That
connection came and went during
our four days there. My p hone
would be silent for hours then start
chiming when a fleeting handshake
was made, it would wake from its
coma and the messages would
come vomiting out.
And so every morning Ruth
and I went on an expedition,
driving winding r oads to
downtown L uray, Va., and
grabbing a table at t he Gathering
Grounds Patisserie a nd Cafe on
Main Street. I recommend it.
Good coffee, cheap breakfast, nice
atmosphere. And strong WiFi.
I don’t l ike imagining how welooked: o pen laptops bookended
against each other on the small
two-top; Ruth with her
headphones on, microphone h eld
up to her lips; me flipping
through the pages of a notebook.
I supposed we looked like jerks
from t he big city, s o self-important
that they couldn’t e ven p ut aside
their work to enjoy their eggs.
The last thing we did before
driving home was tour Luray
Caverns. We r eached a wide
chamber 100 feet below E arth’s
surface. I t was cool and dark. The
walls were rippled flowstone.
Stalactites bristled f rom the
ceiling.
“You may as well put your
phones on airplane mode,” t he
guide announced. “There’s n o
WiFi signal down here and it will
save your battery.”
No WiFi? The horror!
But part of me thought: This
might be a nice place f or a
vacation.
[email protected]
Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit
washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.Fa mily embarks on Shenandoah retreat, caves to call of the wired
John
Kelly's
WashingtonResults from Aug. 4
DISTRICT
Mid-Day Lucky Numbers: 3-9-5
Mid-Day DC-4: 6-9-0-3
Mid-Day DC-5: 3-3-5-0-2
Lucky Numbers (Sat.): 0-8-8
Lucky Numbers (Sun.): 3-0-0
DC-4 (Sat.): 2-5-6-0
DC-4 (Sun.): 7-1-9-3
DC-5 (Sat.): 8-4-0-6-6
DC-5 (Sun.): 5-7-0-5-4
MARYLAND
Mid-Day Pick 3: 0-4-2
Mid-Day Pick 4: 7-5-9-7
Night/Pick 3 (Sat.): 5-5-0
Pick 3 (Sun.): 5-8-1
Pick 4 (Sat.): 7-8-5-9
Pick 4 (Sun.): 3-6-7-8
Match 5 (Sat.): 4-16-18-20-3435
Match 5 (Sun.): 5-8-15-17-34 7
5 Card Cash: 6C-9C-8S-9S-10D
VIRGINIA
Day/Pick-3: 1-7-7
Pick-4: 4-7-2-6
Cash-5: 6-15-17-19-21
Night/Pick-3 (Sat.): 0-9-2
Pick-3 (Sun.): 9-6-6
Pick-4 (Sat.): 5-7-2-6
Pick-4 (Sun.): 0-5-6-5
Cash-5 (Sat.): 6-11-16-18-30
Cash-5 (Sun.): 4-5-10-11-32
Bank a Million: 8-12-13-16-17-38 *22
MULTI-STATE GAMES
Powerball: 3-6-45-66-68 *13
Power Play: 2x
Bonus Ball **Powerball
For late drawings and other results, check
washingtonpost.com/local/lottery
LOTTERIESBY LORI ARATANIStarting Monday, drivers will
pay as much as $7 an hour to park
in Penn Quarter and Chinatown
— part of a city-sponsored pro-
gram designed to reduce conges-
tion and improve parking avail-
ability in the popular entertain-
ment district.
In most areas of the city, park-
ers pay $2.30 hourly, but in Penn
Quarter and Chinatown, rates
vary depending on the time of
day, day of the week and location
of the parking spot. Under the
new pricing, people could pay as
little as $1 or as much as $7 to
park.
The rate changes will cover
about 1,000 on-street parking
spaces in Northwest, between
11th Street and Third Street and
between H Street and E Street.
The changes are part of an
experiment the D.C. Departmentof Transportation launched in- With variable-rate parking
— also known as dynamic pricing
— the goal is to better manage the
District’s parking inventory by
charging more for spaces when
demand is highest.
Rates also are adjusted by
location, which can ensure that
available spaces don’t go unused.
The hope is that higher rates
could nudge people to consider
other modes of transportation,
but the goal is also to ensure
there is at l east one empty spot on
each side of the street on every
block.
“It’s working,” said DDOT Di-
rector Jeff Marootian. “We are
seeing many positive results.”
A January evaluation found
the parking program has reduced
by as much as 15 percent the
amount of time drivers spent
search for parking during all time
periods on weekends and on
weekdays. Officials also saw a
dramatic decrease in the amount
of time vehicles were double-
parked. In August 2017, vehicles
in the neighborhood were
double-parked an average of 131
minutes, but in March 2018, the
average time vehicles were
double-parked dropped 43 per-
cent to 74.4 minutes.
Whether higher rates are
pushing people to take other
transportation is not yet clear.
Evaluators found that Capital
Bikeshare ridership increased
but bus ridership decreased. It
also found that Metro ridership
stabilized, despite ongoing serv-
ice interruptions.
Marootian said the parking
program is just one of several
strategies the District is using to
better manage traffic as its
streets have grown more congest-
ed.
The city has special pickup anddrop-off zones for ride- hailing
services and this month launched
a program that will allow deliv-
ery drivers to reserve curb space.
The goal is to keep traffic moving.
DDOT officials developed two
mobile apps, ParkDC and
VoicePark, to help drivers navi-
gate parking in Penn Quarter and
Chinatown. The apps provide
real-time information about
parking rates and can point driv-
ers to blocks with o pen space. For
those who don’t have smart-
phones, signs have been posted
throughout the neighborhood
th at explain parking rates by
time of day and day of the week.
Dynamic pricing has become a
popular tool in the transporta-
tion world. Virginia has been a
leader in using variable-rate tolls
to manage traffic flow on the
Beltway and Interstate 66 during
rush hour. In Maryland, drivers
on the Inter-County Connectorpay different prices depending
on when they use the roadway.
This is the eighth time rates in
Penn Quarter have been adjusted
since DDOT launched the pro-
gram. A similar variable-rate sys-
tem is in place near Nationals
Park.
Not everyone agrees the pro-
gram should be expanded.
“It has not made parking
cheaper or easier,” said John
To wnsend, a spokesman for AAA
Mid-Atlantic. “What it has done
is make parking more onerous. It
doesn’t benefit anyone except for
the District’s bottom line.”
DDOT officials were unable to
provide information about how
the program has affected parking
revenue in the area. However,
they said drivers would pay the
maximum $7 charge on only 2
percent of blocks in the neighbor-
hood during peak demand.
[email protected]THE DISTRICTHourly parking rates set to hit $7 in Penn Quarter, Chinatown
THE DISTRICT
Baltimore man, 46,
killed in NE shooting
A Baltimore man was fatally
shot Saturday night in Northeast,
police said.
They said Wendell
Youngblood, 46, was found in the
1500 block of North Capitol
Street after a shooting was
reported.
— Laurel Demkovich
MARYLAND
Lightning, fire displace
6 residents, 2 dogs
Six residents and two dogs
were displaced early Sunday after
a lightning strike in Derwood,
according to the Montgomery
County Fire and Rescue Service.
The fire department
responded about 2:45 a.m. to
reports of a fire after lightning
struck the roof of a townhouse in
the 7700 block of Epsilon Drive.
No injuries were reported. The
fire resulted in about $300,000 in
damage, the department said.
— Laurel Demkovich
9 hospitalized from
carbon monoxide
A child was in critical
condition, and eight other people
were hospitalized for carbon
monoxide poisoning Sunday at a
cluster of homes outside
Baltimore, authorities said.
The Baltimore County Fire
Department said five adults and
three children were in stable
condition Sunday in addition to
the child in critical condition.
They said a portable generator
created excess carbon monoxide
and affected multiple homes on
St. Clair Lane in Edgemere.
— Associated Press
LOCAL DIGESTD.C. tests system that lets delivery drivers reserve loading zones
MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
The D.C. pilot program with curbFlow launched Thursday at nine locations. The District is the first city to try the reservation system as
cities are focusing more on curbside management, with demand for space soaring in the age of ride-hailing and on-demand food delivery.BY MARTIN WEILA shooting in Baltimore on
Saturday was listed as the city’s
200th homicide and came during
a “Ceasefire Weekend.”
Baltimore police said a woman,
32, was found in a car on a street
in West Baltimore after a shoot-
ing was reported there.
Four Ceasefire Weekends are
designated each year by Balti-
more Ceasefire, a grass-roots or-
ganization that uses the slogan
“Nobody Kill Anybody.”
With Saturday’s death record-
ed as the 200th homicide this
year, Baltimore is on pace to
exceed last year’s total of 309.
Baltimore’s homicide rate re-
cently received national attention
following controversial tweets by
President Trump in which he
called the city “dangerous.”
The 199th homicide was listed
as that of a woman who died this
year after being shot in 1995.
Police said they were told Satur-
day that her death had been ruled
the result of that shooting nearly
a quarter-century ago.
[email protected]
MARYLAND
Fatal shooting
is Baltimore’s
200th homicide