WASHINGTON — It is seldom easy to find a metered parking space in D.C., and as of Wednesday, it will cost more to park too: Beginning June 1, parking meter rates will go up across the city.
All parking meters will cost $2.30 an hour. In premium parking zones, that means an increase of 30 cents an hour; in normal demand areas, it’s more than a 200 percent jump from the current meter rate of 75 cents per hour.
“This does not increase one parking meter space in the city,” said John Townsend, manager of public and government affairs at AAA Mid-Atlantic. “They are exploiting motorists. There’s a finite number of parking meters in the city.”
There are about 18,000 parking meters in D.C., and the auto club accused the city of overly aggressive ticket writing.
“The District has such an impressive dragnet that it issued over 1.6 million parking tickets last year,” Townsend said, calculating that the revenue produced by those parking tickets reached nearly $88 million.
