WASHINGTON — Drivers parking along one Georgetown block have been getting tickets on their windshield for following the rules, and now D.C. is voiding those tickets or issuing refunds.
A parking sign in the 2900 block of P Street NW, an arterial that connects Dupont Circle to Wisconsin Avenue, sits in a residential neighborhood with at least a dozen churches in a five-by-five block area.
So how would you interpret the bottom “No Parking” sign? When can you park there on Sundays?
If you said that you can park there all day on Sunday, then congratulations! You get a parking ticket from the D.C. Department of Transportation.
More than 200 people who responded to our Facebook question about this sign in March said they would interpret the sign to indicate it was safe to park there. Instead, these drivers would have received a pink and white ticket.
A DDOT ticket officer interpreted the sign to indicate that motorists cannot park on this block at all Monday through Saturday, but drivers can park there on Sunday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. After 5 p.m. on Sunday, no parking is allowed.
But after a WTOP Ticketbuster investigation, DDOT has admitted the sign is incorrect. The agency agrees that people who read the sign to mean free parking anytime on Sunday did not do anything wrong.
“After conducting an initial investigation, DDOT determined that the six tickets written on the 2900 Block of P St., NW, were written in error. DDOT made the decision to request a void of these citations through the Department of Motor Vehicles. All six tickets were submitted to the DMV on Friday, April 10, and all were voided. In three instances, tickets were paid by motorists. Those drivers will be issued refunds for the payments of those citations,” writes DDOT spokeswoman Michelle Phipps-Evans in a statement.
“Going forward, DDOT’s traffic control officers have been instructed to not issue tickets at this location until the sign has been rectified. DDOT is going to work on removing the conflicting sign on that block.”
Based on other similar signs across the city, DDOT simply used poor word choice on this particular sign. The format for signs are:
NO PARKING
EXCEPT
SUNDAYS
X:XX AM- X:XX PM
Parking signs at 1600 H Street, 1500 23rd Street and 1400 31st Street NW all follow this same basic construction.
DDOT will likely replace the sign at 2900 P Street NW to remove the word “anytime” and move the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. below the Sunday.
DDOT hopes changing the word order will make the sign clearer and send the correct message to those going to church.
