The End of an Era - Goodbye Parking Pass

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Our DC visitor parking pass expired on December 31, 2019. We moved to Northern Virginia this year after living on Capitol Hill for thirteen years. With two tiny condos came two visitor parking passes. Since we only had street parking, our vehicle required a residential parking sticker. But if you show proof of residency in the district, you can apply for visitor parking passes. They weren’t used that often when we lived there - primarily for workers who needed to fix something in our condo and the occasional visitor who needed to drive in to get to our house. Since April we have been using the visitor pass to park in our old neighborhood whenever we came in to town for a program at the Library. Now, we will have to do what every one else does - find a street parking space but make sure you don’t stay for more than two hours, or a parking garage if more than two hours is needed. These parking passes are so valuable and we are so sorry we can no longer use them. And we don’t have any friends or family in our DC neighborhood any longer who could let us borrow one if we needed it. I have a feeling we will be going less and less in to town because it’s getting to be more difficult. Metro and Uber are options but I don’t care to use them - though we probably will under the perfect circumstances. 

DOT Visitor Parking Pass

One of the privileges of living in Washington DC is street parking. I am kidding of course. We had a two car garage and a long driveway to park even more vehicles when we lived in the Midwest. But since we moved to Capitol Hill, it's one of the things I miss the most. So you get to spend even more money to get a parking sticker for your car so you can park it in the street. On top of that, every once in awhile visitors do stop by, and they are in a predicament if they don't have a parking sticker on their car. So every year, we apply for a visitor parking pass. It's "free" because we are residents. It can be given to anyone visiting us. But as most things go in this town, these passes are used and abused. When you receive the pass, the information warns of heavy fines if it is not used as intended. We are just happy that we have it if we need it. But don't get me started on how people park around here. It's a long story and it is after all the Christmas season!