So that the Commissioners may have all the facts before endorsing this plan in principle, the Motor Vehicle Parking Agency has been directed to place it on its agenda for consideration and report at the next regular meeting of April 20. Thank you for your interest.

Very truly yours,

A. C. WELLING,

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Engineer Commissioner.

[From the Washington Post, Apr. 21, 1959]

AGENCY HITS SUBWAY PARKING PLAN

The revival of a plan to build a three-level parking garage under Franklin Park ran into stiff opposition from the District Motor Vehicle Parking Agency yesterday.

Agency members, calling it needless and uneconomic, said the organization proposing it would probably be unable to finance it. The Agency operates parking meters and fringe parking lots.

The proposal was advanced by the Central Business Association in a March 27 letter over the signature of O. Č. Nance, Jr., president, to Harry_T. Thompson, Superintendent of National Capital Parks, custodian of Franklin Park.

Nance asked Thompson, an Agency member, that the park be leased to his association for 50 years at $1 a year. He directed Thompson's attention to an underground parking garage in Pershing Square in Los Angeles and to the previous approval by the Agency of a garage under a proposed mall along E Street, NW., beginning at 20th Street, NW.

In other action, the Agency voted to set up a subcommittee to work with the private Federal City Council on a possible survey of downtown parking needs after Agency Director William D. Heath said District Engineer Commissioner A. C. Welling favored working out a master plan for parking.

Senator TYDINGS. Let me ask you, Does the newspaper article indicate any members of the old Parking Authority who made those comments?

Mr. NUSSBAUM. No; it did not, sir; it simply cites their opposition. I would also like to be certain that the committee has available—this is my last personal copy-the report of the Federal City Council of September 1964 on parking in the Nation's Capital.

Senator TYDINGS. It has been entered in the hearing record.

Mr. NUSSBAUM. Because your bill, Mr. Senator, includes the standing recommendations of the Traffic Board for many years.

We thank you. We thank you especially for taking so much time on the problems of the District.

Senator TYDINGS. Thank you, Mr. Nussbaum. You are very helpful and I apprecite the fact that your time is valuable.

The traffic conditions are difficult at best, so we doubly appreciate your being here.

Mr. J. Madison Hunnicutt, Jr., immediate past president of the International Municipal Parking Congress. We are delighted to welcome you before our committee.

Since I didn't have your statement available beforehand to study, I would appreciate it if you would go ahead and read your statement and then comment thereafter.

57-450 0-66 32

STATEMENT OF J. MADISON HUNNICUTT, JR., IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL MUNICIPAL PARKING CONGRESS

Mr. HUNNICUTT. All right.

My name is J. Madison Hunnicutt, Jr. I am immediate past president of the Municipal Parking Congress, and I am also chief of the Bureau of Parking of Montgomery County, Md.

My purpose in appearing before this committee is to speak in favor of S. 2769, parking bill, that will do much to begin improving the serious parking shortage in Washington.

Washington holds the dubious distinction of being considered among municipal parking officials as having one of the worst parking shortages of any major city in the United States.

The parking shortage in Washington which has been well documented in these hearings is the result of several different causes.

The exact shortage of parking spaces is a difficult matter on which to place an exact quantitative figure as a lot depends on who calculates the shortage and what kind of ground rules he followed.

It is even a difficult matter among professionals to count existing parking spaces in downtown as one person may count the lot or garage when it is full and the aisles are free for circulation and another count may be made when the aisles are packed full. The capacity of the facility can easily come out two widely divergent answers and the parking analyst may well choose the figure that suits him best.

Another factor that makes parking figures very difficult to compare effectively is the unique characteristics of each city. These are caused by geography, age of the downtown size of the central business district, amount of floor area devoted to retail and office space, car ownership, political situation, transportation system, State laws, and the individual vitality of the business community.

When all of these variables are stirred into comparison it is exceedingly difficult to compare Washington's parking situation with that of Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, or anywhere else.

Yet, competent studies made by professional independent consulting parking engineers indicate as true a picture as it is possible to get.

A factor which has been most instrumental in causing and perpetu ating a shortage of downtown parking has been its private parking operators. This group is better organized and financed here than in any other U.S. city I know and because of this, it has continually fought efforts to make a solution possible.

With a well-oiled staff and lobby, it has rearranged the facts of parking to a point that the real situation becomes obscured somewhere amid the charge and countercharge and verbiage which is all meant to confuse the public and thereby convince them that anything other than the status quo is socialism.

Senator TYDINGS. I gather from your testimony that you consider that the private parking lobby in the District of Columbia is better organized and better financed than in any other city in the United States, and that it has continually fought efforts to make any type of realistic parking solution possible. I gather further that you feel that, through their well-oiled staff and lobby the private parking lobby confused the public about the facts of parking.

Mr. HUNNICUTT. Yes, sir; I do.

Senator TYDINGS. I thought that is what you said but I just wanted to make sure everybody heard what you said.

Mr. HUNNICUTT. Only possibly Ontario, Canada, has a more effective-well, at least, as effective.

One big source of confusion with facts has been the lack of differentiation between the private parking operators and the private parking industry. From what I have been able to discern from the testimony I have heard is that the private parking operators and parking industry are one and the same.

I am sure that this would be amusing to some banks, real estate developers, hotels, department stores, restaurants and individual stores to find out that they are considered part of the private parking industry.

In 1958, in Nashville, Tenn., I made a study of the parking in its central business district and found it had more than 19,000 spaces at the curb, in lots, and garages. All the off-street spaces were in 121 separate lots and garages but only 38 of these were open to the public with the rest being reserved for employees, customers, and other private uses not open to the public.

Of the 38 commercial lots and garages, only 2 were actually owned by the operator with the rest having been developed by capital from department stores, banks, and the like who, again, would never consider themselves part of the private parking industry but primarily interested in parking for the financial return and service to its customers and business visitors.

While I have no such facts on Washington, it is not difficult to assume that like percentages may be true in this case also.

In actuality, parking is not a difficult subject to understand. It doesn't take a whale of a lot of technical knowledge to analyze that there are only a few major considerations which are only a matter of good commonsense.

To be effective, parking must be adequate, well located, operated with the public's interest utmost in mind, reasonably priced, and planned according to need in conjunction with expressways and other types of transportation. Surely, one of the main reasons that Washington is in the bind it now finds itself is that almost none of these basic concepts have been carried forth in the past nor is there much obvious hope of anything being done in the future unless something is done to get matters off dead center.

There is nothing unique about local government assisting if it was determined that something be done to cure its parking ills. Boston, New Haven, Providence, New York City, Newark, Jersey City, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Miami, Miami Beach, Tampa, Nashville, Memphis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Milwaukee, and so forth across the country, all have had to get into parking because of the failure of the old laissez-faire idea that parking would take care of itself. Gentlemen, it won't.

Like the other cities across the country, now is the time that Washington must move.

So that we can better understand need for immediate action, let us review Washington in relation to the basic facts I outlined. They are adequacy of parking, well located, operated with the public in mind, reasonably priced, and provided on a planned basis.

Several months ago, a friend and I came to town on a Tuesday to buy a suit and went to our destination and began looking for a nearby

space. We passed by nine parking garages that were full and had cars waiting in the street before finding one garage that had two spaces left. By then we were seven blocks from our destination.

My friend remarked, "This is why I would rather go to Baltimore and shop." How many thousands of shoppers and millions of dollars are lost to downtown each year for this single reason?

The shortage of space downtown is nowhere more critical than along the Mall. With much of our great heritage enshrined in museums along the Mall, this is the focal point for most of the more than 9 million tourists and 400,000 convention delegates. Yet, there are virtually no places to park on the Mall and few within reasonable walking distances.

As most visitors come to Washington and reach the Mall by private car, the museums are about as accessible as Victoria Falls in Africa, where about the only way to see them is by plane. If something is not done soon to provide for our visitors, chartered helicopters surely will have to be used in the future.

The idea that out-of-town visitors are going to park elsewhere and ride shuttle buses or walk a mile or more to the Mall is wishful thinking as it goes completely against human nature. The shifting around of a few parking regulations on streets in the Mall doesn't solve any problems either. All this does is move the problem. Parkers who were using these spaces before are now moved onto other nearby spaces and overflowing them and displacing other tourists.

I have often thought of the Mall as America's front yard and it should be as beautiful as possible because we want to show it off and be proud of it. The long strings of cars stretched up and down it could be put beneath it and the streets closed off. Tunnels under the Mall could serve as access points to thousands of spaces for the benefit of visitors and workers alike.

Such a garage system would be an incentive to beautify the Mall in line with several recent plans. Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Nashville, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Detroit, all have replaced beautiful parks atop efficient parking garages.

The three most important factors in parking are location, location, and location. If parking spaces are not located where people want to go and within definite limits of how far they are willing to walk, you will probably find the attendant in such a far-off lot reading a book and grass growing between cracks in pavement.

Washington's parking has grown up on a disorganized expedient basis and put where land became available and this is not necessarily where the demand is greatest or where people wish to park.

Most downtown spaces are in lots which came into being because the old buildings were no longer profitable and were torn down to get them off the tax rolls. Just as soon as a more profitable use can be found for the property, the parking disappears.

The nearby merchants can also see their customers disappear with closing of the lots. It is no wonder that the average downtown merchant looks on parking as a "here today, gone tomorrow" commodity. How can a merchant plan a business expansion when his parking supply is so mercurial?

It is imperative that adequate parking on a permanent basis be provided so that some manner of stability can be achieved.

In probably no respect is Washington's parking so defective as in the realm of being run for the ease and efficiency of the public. Based

on modern design techniques, equipment, and operation, Washington is 20 years behind time.

The average parking facility design now being used here is out of date and is no longer used in most progressive cities. More than 15 years ago, most new garages throughout the country began to be designed on a self-parking basis so the driver could park his own car and this was done for a variety of good reasons.

At Chicago's Grant Park underground garage, customer preference is almost 20 to 1 in favor of self-park because they can come and go without waiting. The driver can take his key after he locks his car and he doesn't have the feeling that he has turned over his $4,000 car to some attendant who takes off like someone left over from the Indianapolis speedway.

Senator TYDINGS. Why don't we go ahead and put the rest of your statement in the record, Mr. Hunnicutt, and why don't you then hit the high points of it?

(The statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF J. MADISON HUNNICUTT, JR., IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL MUNICIPAL PARKING CONGRESS

(Continuation of that part of the statement not read into the hearing record.)

Poorly designed and operated garages and lots here are one of the main sources of downtown traffic congestion. A short walking trip around downtown during midday will show dozens of parking facilities with cars backed up into the street which block an entire lane of moving traffic. In an effort to cut costs, there always seems to be a shortage of parking attendants on the job at these facilities and inbound parkers are forced to wait up to a half hour while old outmoded operating methods tediously grind on. The situation is reversed when the parker returns for the car. Many times, a nice brisk stand out in the cold can be in store when returning while cars are shuffled all over the lot to get at the particular one wanted. In most other cities, full advantage is taken of new design techniques and equipment. Entering such a modern garage, an automatic ticket is dispensed after the car actuates an electronic detector. Cars can be taken off the street at the rate of 6 to 10 per minute. The driver then proceeds up gently sloping ramps and parks in a wide stall where all supporting columns have been placed out of the way. She then goes to the street in a self-service elevator. When leaving the garage after finishing her trip, the ticket is presented to a cashier as she drives out and the cashier, in a turnpikelike booth, computes the charge, accepts the fee, and the driver leaves. The outbound operation takes about 20 seconds and isn't this a far cry from most of the parking garages around here?

Washington can no longer afford the luxury of relinquishing precious street lanes needed for moving traffic because of poorly designed and operated parking facilities. It must have the power to regulate the construction of any such facility where it is obvious that it will be a source of traffic congestion for years to come. Because of the antiquated design of facilities, this forces cars to be parked by attendants which therefore raises the cost of parking. Studies I have made indicate that a self-parking garage can be operated as much as 40 percent cheaper than one with attendants. The cost of parking is too high. The shopper who stays slightly over 2 hours winds up paying about the same as an all-day parker and this is obviously not a fact that tends to encourage shoppers to come to downtown.

The cost of parking should be set as low as possible to attract the short-term parker who comes to shop and do business. Rates should provide enough money to maintain high operating and maintenance standards, repayment of invested capital, and a reasonable profit. They should not be arbitrarily set at whatever the traffic will bear. Surely, rates in any spaces built by the proposed Parking Board should be set this way and definitely should not be to conform to a nearby private lot which has an entirely different set of values in mind.

The appearance of most facilities is nothing for which a great deal of good can be said. Mostly they are poorly paved, inadequately lighted with an outhouse in the middle. Cars encroach on the sidewalk, into alleys and up against adjacent