Did You Know that the Average Parking Space Costs More than the Average Car?

Especially since Parking Day, Livable Places has been thinking a lot about how parking impacts Los Angeles – and ramping up our efforts to rethink our parking policies so they better serve our communities.

A lot of our most commonly held ideas about parking turn out to be, well … inaccurate. Did you know that the average parking space costs more than the average car? Did you know that about a third of traffic in commercial districts is people in cars cruising for parking spots – wasting fuel and time and creating pollution, congestion, and greenhouse gases?

Parking reform is an important tool to making our communities more walkable, more equitable, and more environmentally friendly. Much of Los Angeles’ parking policy was written with suburbs in mind and hasn’t changed in many years. There are lots (pun intended) of parking tools that have been used in other cities – for example: Old Town Pasadena has shared parking structures and parking meter revenue funds local improvements, including sidewalk repair.

Below are two modest ordinances currently under consideration that can serve to reform parking in the City of Los Angeles. These are expected to be decided in 2008. Join Livable Places Policy Action Team to help put pressure on the city to adopt parking policies that will make Los Angeles healthier.

Here’s what’s being proposed – more information will be included in future e-newsletters and alerts:

The proposed Parking Reduction Ordinance would allow reduced on-site parking requirements for new development near rail, bus, bicycle, car-sharing or other transit alternatives. There is a proposed amendment where developers receiving reduced parking would pay an in-lieu fee to fund construction of transit facilities.

The proposed Downtown Parking Management Ordinance would establish a special parking district in downtown, including adjacent areas of Chinatown, Westlake, and Pico Union. The parking district would include various reform measures: reduced minimum parking requirements near transit, in-lieu fee to fund shared public parking, modernization of meters, earmarking parking meter revenue for downtown projects (such as enhanced DASH shuttle service, sidewalk repair, etc.), and new parking design standards (such as including ground-floor retail at new parking structures.)

Read more about rethinking parking here.