Montgomery Could Revert to Old Parking Hours

Montgomery County Council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring) said this week that she plans to introduce a resolution at Tuesday's County Council meeting to suspend the expanded hours during which people must pay for public parking in downtown Bethesda, Silver Spring and Wheaton.

The move was prompted by an outcry from residents and business owners, particularly in Wheaton and Silver Spring. What started as a trickle turned into a flood of more than 500 phone calls over the past two weeks, Ervin said.

"What we want to do is to reverse the parking hours to what they were before the council changed them," Ervin said Tuesday.

The expanded hours require payment for parking until 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday for surface lots and on-street parking. Public garages also require fees for parking until 10 p.m. weekdays, though they remain free on Saturdays and Sundays.

The changes went into effect Sunday, but officials said they will not be enforced until the issue is resolved.

The resolution calls for suspending the change in hours but would leave intact the increase in parking rates. Based on conversations with other council members, Ervin said, she expects it to pass.

The areas most affected by the expanded hours would have been south Silver Spring, where patrons could park free in public spaces on weekday nights or Saturdays. The small-business owners there rely on public parking to serve their customers and cannot compete with areas that have free parking garages, Ervin said. Those garages, subject to private agreements, are free on weekday nights and weekends.

In downtown Bethesda, those who normally parked free in the surface lot across from Barnes & Noble, near the Capital Crescent Trail, would be charged until 10 p.m. Also under the change, downtown Wheaton parking hours were extended from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. This would hurt the burgeoning business district there, Ervin said.

"It was a question of inequity," she said.

The move also costs residents of the Silver Spring central business district who park free on streets after 7 p.m. "Because there are rising rents all over Silver Spring, we felt it wasn't fair to charge residents to pay to park on the street," Ervin said.

The changes in rates and hours were adopted in May as part the 2008 budget provision to establish uniform hours in all the county parking districts: downtown Bethesda, the Montgomery Hills commercial area on Georgia Avenue between 16th Street and the Capital Beltway, the North Bethesda commercial and office areas near the White Flint Metro station and in Rock Spring Park, and the downtown areas in Silver Spring and Wheaton. It was part of a plan to generate revenue to repay loans made to the parking districts from the county's general fund.

Repaying the general fund is a problem that has yet to be solved. The matter will be taken up by the county's Transportation and Environment Committee, Ervin said.