Dc Heads Up
3/29/11
I recently came back from a 5 day trip to our nations capital, Washington, DC. As we all know, DC has made it increasingly tough for us motorcoach drivers to find spots to park our buses. Used to be, in days gone by, that there was plenty or room in places such as the Washington Mall by the museums, and the monuments, as well as many other places. As long as you shut your motor off, you were pretty much ok, unless you were blocking something.
But now, you can't even THINK about parking in most places as it will earn you a ticket.
On my recent trip, I THOUGHT I had done my homework. I printed out all kind of parking information about where to park, directly from the DC website. I am so glad I did.
I dropped my group off in front of the US Capital, and proceeded around to the 300 block of Jefferson Ave, which is one block down from the Air and Space museum, and directly outside of the American Indian museum. I didnt look at the sign, ecept what caught my eye was tour bus, so I thought all was well. Here comes the capital police for a level 3 DOT Check. No problem there, as thats pretty much a license check. He never mentioned anything at all about the 9 buses that were parked there, nor did he tell us to leave.
About 45 minutes later, i saw the driver in front of me run out of his bus, giving me the signal to "get out of here". It was too late. The US Park police was writing tickets at $500 each for parking where we were. Ouch.
Thanks God I actually got to talk to the officer, who by the way, was genuinely a nice guy and actually, unlike so many others I have heard about there, actually listened to my side. He looked at all the papers I had printed, and looked that the dates, and told me he was "taking back my ticket" but advised me that apparently the DC website is NOT correct in any way about bus parking.
That is the reason for this page. I want to give my fellow drivers a heads up about the parking there.
The last trip I had here, I met a driver from Tennessee, and we talked before he went to DC that day. We met later at the hotel, and he relayed this to me. He dropped his group off at the American History museum, and he had to go to the bathroom really bad. He didnt want to use the one on the bus, so doing what he thought was right, he ran in there real fast to go. He was gone for about 4 min at most. He came back out to 2 tickets on the window.
Parking $500
Engine Idling $500.
There went this mans pay for the next 2 weeks.
DC knows they are one of the main places that Tour buses go, and yet they make it tougher and tougher on us to bring people to the city. Next thing, they will have us all dropping our groups off at the RFK Stadium, and forcing groups on the Metro.
Hopefully, someone in power will fix this!