DC parking tickets draw Council scrutiny over old signs

DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson pressed city agencies over $100 DC parking tickets issued at decommissioned bus and streetcar zones.

Mendelson sent letters to the DC Department of Transportation and the DC Department of Public Works after residents reported citations tied to curb restrictions they said no longer exist. DDOT manages street signs, while DPW issues parking tickets based on posted restrictions.

A $100 bus-zone citation

One driver received a $100 ticket for obstructing a bus stand and zone at a location residents described as abandoned. The bus stop had been decommissioned about a year earlier, according to the account provided by residents and reviewed in a local television report.

"It's outrageous that people are getting tickets for violations for situations that don't exist," Mendelson said. He added that residents in the area should not face tickets linked to a transit use the city has already ended: "If you own a car in that district, you ought to be able to park it."

Mendelson said the problem is not limited to one curbside location. In his letter, he told DDOT and DPW that outdated restrictions and signage should be removed rather than used as the basis for enforcement.

"Not only can you not be issuing these tickets, but you need to get your act together and get these restrictions and signage removed," Mendelson said of the departments. The statement put both the sign-setting agency and the enforcement agency at the center of the Council chairman's complaint.

H Street merchants count spaces

Residents also reported tickets tied to streetcar restrictions, even though the streetcar is no longer operating, according to Mendelson. The issue is especially visible on H Street, where merchants have watched curb rules change across several phases of transit planning and shutdowns.

Muhammad Rashid, who has owned The House of Good on H Street for 15 years, said parking rules outside his business have moved from afternoon limits to streetcar-era bans and then to uncertainty. "From 3 to 6. You couldn't park," Rashid said, describing an earlier restriction before the streetcar arrived.

Rashid said the lack of clear parking has become a daily business concern. He said he spends much of his day checking the curb outside to avoid a ticket and argued that merchants need more workable access for customers and deliveries.

"It's hard for the businesses in the area; there's no parking," Rashid said. "They do need to try to improve it a little bit for the merchants. If you notice, a lot of merchants have moved out of the area because there's no parking."

Agencies face sign backlog

Mendelson framed the enforcement issue as a basic fairness problem: residents should not pay fines for restrictions that no longer match the curb's current use. "The government should not be taking money from people on false premises, and that's essentially what's going on now," he said.

At 14th Street, the disputed signage has since been removed, according to the source account. The city then replaced it with a no parking anytime sign and a handicap parking sign, leaving residents with a different set of limits rather than an unrestricted curb.

DDOT and DPW had not responded to requests for comment at the time of the original account. A DDOT contact said the agency is behind on removing signage, while DPW will continue to follow posted signs and issue tickets as long as those signs remain in place.

The next practical step is whether DDOT audits old transit-related signs quickly enough to prevent new citations. If outdated signs stay up, DPW's enforcement process may continue producing disputed tickets; if the signs come down, the pressure shifts to whether already-issued fines are canceled or refunded.