So, of course, the District Department of Transportation (‘DDOT’) supports it (boldface mine):

Now federal transportation officials are looking for a solution to get the delivery trucks blamed for clogging the roads off the streets during the busiest hours of the day.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced a pilot program to encourage overnight deliveries in an effort to relieve congestion on city streets. The District started experimenting with this idea last spring, also hoping to reduce congestion downtown and in other busy corridors.

“The problem of daytime truck traffic is well-known to any major city in the United States, and it’s time for new solutions,” said Federal Highway Administrator Gregory Nadeau in a statement. “While aggravating local traffic, trucks too have been forced to crawl through city streets – causing businesses losses in time, money and productivity.”

Transportation officials say switching the hours of truck deliveries to off-peak times when traffic is lighter and curb space more available could be a win-win situation in cities like Washington suffering from chronic traffic congestion. Truck drivers would spare themselves from the bumper-to-bumper traffic that delays them, while other road users wouldn’t have to deal with trucks blocking travel lanes and parking access.

Truck drivers. Other road users. You know who isn’t mentioned once in the entire fucking article? Residents. If you’ve ever lived near a business receiving middle-of-the-night deliveries, you know the joy of being woken up by a truck’s reverse gear alarm, followed by twenty minutes of engine idling. I can’t help but think that many of the DDOT personnel who think this is so goddamn wonderful either don’t live in D.C. at all, or else live in the very suburban parts of the city.

What’s infuriating about this is that the problem of too many cars–we need trucks for deliveries–is elevated above residents. Rather than figuring out how to get more D.C. workers either to live in D.C. or to use mass transit to get to work, DDOT’s solution is to jolt residents out of bed in the wee hours of the morning.

That should be the “new solution.”

Fucking morons.