Here is the detail of the regulation from the DC Motor Vehicles website:
�
2405.2 No person shall stand or park a vehicle, whether occupied or not, in any of the
following places (including for the purpose of loading or unloading materials),
except when necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic, or at the direction of
a police officer, traffic control sign, or signal; Provided, that a vehicle may stop
momentarily to pick up or discharge a passenger or passengers:
(a) In front of or within five feet (5 ft.) of an alley, public driveway, or private
driveway;
(b) Within ten feet (10 ft.) of a fire hydrant;
(c) Within forty feet (40 ft.) of the intersection of curb lines of intersecting
streets or within twenty-five feet (25 ft.) of the intersection of curb lines
on the far (non-approach) side of a one-way street; except that trucks
vending ice cream shall park curbside when stopping to make a sale, as
close as possible to a pedestrian cross-walk without entering the
intersection, and without unduly interfering with the flow of traffic;
(d) Within twenty-five feet (25 ft.) of the approach side of any �STOP� or
�YIELD� sign located at the side of the roadway;
(e) Within fifty feet (50 ft.) of the nearest railroad crossing;
(f) Within twenty feet (20 ft.) of a fire station driveway entrance;
(g) In or on any street or roadway when such parking will reduce the width of
the open roadway to less than ten feet (10 ft.);
(h) In front of any barricade or sign that has been placed for the purpose of
closing the highway;
(i) Within three feet (3 ft.) of the front or rear of another vehicle or vehicles
parked at or parallel to the curb, except where dual parking meters are
installed and curb parking spaces marked to ensure maneuvering space
between �dual parked� vehicles;
(j) Except where otherwise provided under law or regulation, on a sidewalk
space; Provided, that bicycles may be parked on a sidewalk in a manner
which does not obstruct pedestrian traffic; or
(k) In a fire lane.

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Here's specifically what you are looking for - the 5 foot rule.
It in the on-line DC DMV Regs. Easy to find. Check (a).

Not a bad idea to check them all out to refresh your memory, while
you're at it. I was glad to do so as well.

Restricted 40 feet from an intersection; - (with a rough car length
of 15 feet for a medium sized American car) - means almost three full
car lengths back from the corner!!!!!!!!!?? Isn't this, just
maybe, sightly ridiculous overkill?? (To be really safe, how about
all the way back to Topeka, Kansas?)

This 40 foot rule means a nightly neighbor-to-neighbor battle for
the only two legal parking spaces remaining in the middle of the
block. How about standing our cars on end for parking? They're
shorter that way.

How many times in DC is this 40 foot rule ignored? Ticketable at
39 feet? I have been told by a reliable source there is a DC
police car parked overnight in front of somebody's house regularly
no further than three feet from the intersection - and never seems
to get ticketed.

JAM



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Actually, the regulation is only 2 hours parking within a zone, not
at a particular space. So if you earlier were parking somewhere else
in Zone 3, you may have exceeded the 2 hour limit. It's easy for the
enforcement people to track this with computers.

--- In COMMUNIT-E@yahoogroups.com, Nancy LeRoy <nancyrleroy@...>
wrote:
>
> I just got a parking ticket for parking on Harrison Street at
about
> 5:30 p.m. Parking there is restricted to two hours until 6:30
p.m.
> for people without a residential parking sticker.
>
> I don't have a residential parking sticker and I pulled into a
space
> that had just been vacated near the driveway to the funeral home.
> When I returned, I found a parking ticket put there at 5:42 p.m.
So
> I have to pay the city $30 for sloppy work by Officer D. Clark
even
> though I was parked legally for only one hour in a two-hour zone.
> I'll deny it, but am sure I'll end up paying anyway. Frustrating!
>
> nancyrleroy@...
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>