Alexandria officials are weighing a special parking district in neighborhoods on Seminary Road near the Mark Center, the Pentagon's new home for thousands of defense workers come September.
City officials are worried about nightmarish traffic conditions that are likely to occur once thousands of employees begin commuting to work along Seminary Road and Interstate 395, the intersection where the Mark Center office space is located. The move is mandated as a part of the Army's Base Realignment and Closure plan.
While 6,400 employees will begin working at the facility by Sept. 15, only 3,700 spaces have been built for employees to park. The lack of on-site parking is by design -- officials wanted to discourage employees from driving in single-occupancy vehicles and encourage carpooling to work.
However, the policy will encourage those commuters to seek overflow parking in surrounding residential neighborhoods, according to a memo city transportation workers sent to the Alexandria City Council. Councilman Rob Krupicka said the council will likely approve an ordinance establishing the parking district.
"My expectation is it's going to have a lot of support," Krupicka said. "BRAC has limited parking, which means there is a danger employees are going to use the neighborhoods as a parking lot, and we need to prevent that from happening."
A daytime parking policy would require vehicles to display a proper Alexandria decal, proof of the owner's residence in the city, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Within a parking district drawn by city officials, residents would then be required to submit petitions to the city Department of Transportation and Environmental Services to have the parking restrictions implemented on their block and signs posted.
Employees who can't carpool or drive themselves to work will have to find public transportation to the Mark Center, which is also likely to be scarce. Plans are in place to provide DASH bus service and shuttles from Metro stops at King Street and the Pentagon, but Krupicka said he's still concerned it won't be enough for everyone to get to work.
"We're going to need a lot more transit put in place," he said. "This is an area that's really poorly served by transit, and it's going to need a fairly dramatic transit overhaul to make this work."
The prospect of overflow parking, as well as delays for a planned new ramp from the interstate HOV lanes onto Seminary Road, underscore the need to improve public transportation options near the Mark Center as quickly as possible, Krupicka said.
According to the memo, several residents requested the stricter residential parking permit program, which requires separate permits for each vehicle parked outside a home, to be implemented near Mark Center. The program is used in Old Town and near the city's Metro stations. Instead, the Traffic and Parking Board recommended the more lenient daytime parking policy.
