Wildflowers in bloom at the cornfields. Note the proximity of industrial development. Photo: Creek Freak

Can a community plan claim to be progressive without a strong affordable housing component?

That questions has been at the heart of a debate about the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan (CASP) that promises to transform 660 acres located in the communities of Lincoln Heights, Cypress Park and Chinatown from mixed-use, mostly industrial, to a more residential area with industrial areas designed to attract green and other LEED certified (environmentally clean) businesses.  Back in March of 2009, Joe Linton described many of the benefits of the plan, including a decoupling or parking from rental or purchase fees of new apartments.

But what makes the plan so impressive to Livable Streets advocates makes it a nightmare for affordable housing ones.  Because the plan offers increased density and reduced parking requirements without requiring an affordable housing tradeoff, advocates are concerned that the end result of the CASP will be to force out existing residents by turning the area into one for those earning a higher income.

“The critical question about the Cornfields Arroyo Seco Specific Plan is this: Will the plan lead to luxury housing and market rate shops unaffordable to local residents? Or will it lead to a community where everyone can live?” asks Serena Lin, a staff attorney with Public Counsel. “Right now the plan prioritizes luxury housing developers over local residents, and we call on Councilman Ed Reyes to amend it.”

If CASP had a provision that offered extra density bonuses or reduced parking standards if a developer agrees to build a small percentage of affordable units, the Plan could be a real tool in our City’s toolkit argues Public Counsel. Instead of fighting with community groups, the city could proactively plan for communities where all residents, including people struggling with poverty, can afford to live. Instead, the Plan offers developers incentives to build market rate housing, without any provision for affordable housing. In an area with a median income of less than $25,000 per year, much of the current community would get priced out of a community where they.

“There’s been a lot of pressure to change the zoning for the plan are over the years,” explains Claire Bowen, the project manager with the Department of City Planning (Planning) for the project.

Bowen points to recent affordable housing developments that have already gone into the area, many of whom are getting exclusions from the existing zoning code.  This leads to “spot zoning” and haphazard mixed use planning that benefits few people.  Instead of pushing people out of the area, Bowen argues that the community will be improved to make life better for the people already living in the area.

But she also readily concedes that the CASP is about bringing in new people and new businesses into the area.

“This is an area we’re trying to attract people to,” Bowen supplies. “Cities that are successful in attracting new clean or green light industrial uses, they’re attracted to areas that have these types of amenities versus single zoned areas.”

At a public meeting held on Saturday, residents and community leaders expressed concern about bringing in too many new people without providing an affordable way to maintain housing for current residents and expanded affordable housing for their families.  Representatives from the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance, Homeboy Industries and the Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA) all voiced concern at the lack of affordable housing guarantees in the plan.  All in all, between 80-100 people attended the meeting, most of those who spoke were there to raise concerns about CASP’s impact on existing community residents.

“We fought hard to build the vibrant community that we have here,” claims Sissy Trinh, with SEACA.  ”Now the city is setting in motion a plan that risks destroying that in order to build luxury housing. All the while, the luxury housing that was built in the last few years sits empty while our families struggle to find affordable housing.”

SEACA has created a website outlining the pros and cons of the CASP from their point of view and offers ways the city could improve upon the existing plan.  SEACA notes there are many benefits to the plan as it exists including better streets, better bicycle infrastructure and the potential to bring more jobs, more affordable housing and more transit options to the area.  For each of their cons, City Planning has some sort of answer, although in many cases the answer wouldn’t be satisfactory to those pushing to protect the community.

For example, SEACA argues that while CASP would double the residents living in the area, there are no plans to improve the infrastructure to help move all of the new residents and deal with new traffic.  City Planning points to the impressive bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure planned for the area and the existing transit infrastructure.  The CASP area includes two Gold Line Stations, is adjacent to another one and if you add up all of the bus stops made in a given day, it averages roughly 1,000 stops per day.

But is that a realistic transportation plan when so many of the “market rate” units that will be encouraged will be filled by people with the means to own or lease automobiles?  If the city’s plan were to attract more affordable housing, then there would likely be a lower physical impact on road infrastructure as there would be less cars.  But the plan is to attract more middle-class, or “market rate” housing.   Will these new residents be as wiling to forego their cars?

To answer that question, Bowen and Planning point to the reduced car parking requirements in the CASP.  It’s undeniable that limiting the amount of space for personal vehicle storage is a proven way to reduce congestion and vehicle miles traveled while encouraging a more healthy lifestyle.  Bowen herself argues that there is way too much car parking in Los Angeles.  ”We waste so much space holding space just waiting for a car to show up.”

Special thanks to Allison Mannos who reported on this weekend’s community meeting.

Photo: LA Weekly

Minus it’s chair, the progressive Ed Reyes, Councilmen Paul Krekorian and Jose Huizar moved not just a bike parking ordinance cheered by bike advocates, but also an ordinance that gives much needed flexibility to the city’s car parking requirements for new development. Currently, one set of parking requirements exist for developments based on size and use with no consideration given to the community surrounding the development.

The ”Modified Parking Requirement” District (MPR District) ordinance would allow communities and zoning officers to flex ordinances so that a developments  parking fits its community. “Any steps we can take to provide greater flexibility are steps in the right direction,” Councilman Paul Krekorian explained.

“The parking concenrs of Van Nuys are not the parking concerns of Venice.” “A toolkit, that’s all this is,” commented Hilary Norton of Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic (FAST) who went on to discuss how a change from the city’s current parking ordinance revitalized Eagle Rock.  ”We saved neighborhood trips so we could open our community for everyone else.”

Councilman Huizar built on Norton’s point, “On Colorado Boulevard, we have implemented a “parking credit program,” it has allowed new businesses to open.”

A (MPR) District would offer seven optional parking requirement modification tools including (1) change of use parking standards, (2) use of a new Parking Reduction Permit, (3) off-site parking within 1500 feet, (4) decreased parking requirements, (5) increased parking requirements, (6) commercial parking credits, and (7) maximum parking limits.

Earlier draft ordinances drew criticism from neighborhood activists, but yesterday the only complaint was about the amount of notification neighborhoods would receive of the applications for the MPR Districts.

Neighborhood activist A ctivist Wendy Sue Rosen testified, “…what you have before you is really a balanced ordinance.” Like the bicycle parking ordinance before it, the MPR District Ordinance will undergo final drafting from city staff then head to the Full Council later this fall.

Architect Will Wright has been an outspoken advocate of parking reform and finds this draft ordinance to be a major step in the right direction.  ”This really is about making communities more walkable and more livable.  If there’s a parking lot between me and where I’m going, that’s extra walking I have to do to get where I need to go.”

DN – Los Angeles is changing the way it does parking in Downtown.  They’re calling it the ExpressPark system. Let’s start with the basics, what is the program and what are your thoughts?

The Times took a poke at ExpressPark in a recent editorial cartoon. Check it out by clicking on the picture.

DN – One of the tenets of The High Cost of Free Parking is that money collected from meters should be returned to the communities where it was collected.  L.A. pours all the meter funds into the general fund.  Is that a mistake by the city?  Does it give you any misgivings about the plan altogether?

DS – Pouring all the meter revenue into the general fund is a mistake. If the city returns some of the revenue to the metered neighborhoods, it can get both local buy-in and some wonderful results.

Pasadena returns all of its meter revenue to pay for added public services in the metered neighborhoods, and Old Pasadena is a good example of the benefits. Old Pasadena was until the 1980s a commercial skid row and now it is one of the most popular shopping destinations in Southern California.  Parking meter revenue helps to explain that success. The meters, which were installed in Old Pasadena in 1993, bring in $1 million a year to spend on in added public services in just that little shopping district.  The meter money paid to replace all the sidewalks, streetlights, street trees, and street furniture.  It paid to clean up the alleys and put electric wires underground.  The meter money also pays to pressure wash the sidewalks twice a month and to provide added police services. If LA adopted Pasadena’s parking meter policy, all of our business districts would be much more prosperous. Residents of LA would not have to go to Pasadena or Santa Monica or Culver City to walk around in clean and safe environments.

DN – San Francisco has a program similar to ExpressPark. How is it working?

DS – San Francisco started its program, called SFpark, this year and last month it made the first price adjustments based on occupancy rates. Prices stayed just the same for 37 percent of the meters, increased for 32 percent, and decreased for 31 percent.

A journalist called me and said, “I don’t understand this.  The price is going up on one block and going down two blocks away.  The price is going to change from block to block.” My answer was that if one block has only half its spaces occupied, do you think the city should not lower the price on that block? Most people would probably agree with a lower the price.  But if a block is always full of parked cars, why should the city not raise the price on that block?

I think there’s going to be some trial and error in setting the prices.  People should wait to see the results before they denounce Express Park.

DN – Do you think drivers will be confused if meter rates are different on different blocks in downtown?

DS – Drivers should be able to deal with this.  Just as they can deal with gasoline prices that are different at gas stations that are on different blocks.  Prices are different for different grades of gasoline and some stations have different prices for full service self service, and drivers are not confused.  So I don’t think drivers will be confused if the cost of parking is different on different blocks. If people are willing to walk farther from their parking spaces to their destinations, they can save money and get some exercise.

DS – I think the city is wise to start modestly and see what happens each month. San Francisco has three different price periods: before noon, noon to 3 pm, and after 3 pm.  If it becomes apparent that there are different occupancy rates at different times within the existing periods, they may extend the meter hours or have more fine-grained price periods.

DS:   The main problem we already have in L.A. is the widespread abuse of handicapped placards.  A disabled placard in California is like a “free parking” pass for the entire state.  One of our students just finished his Masters thesis on placard abuse in downtown.  He surveyed one block on Flower Street where there are 14 metered parking spaces.  Most of the spaces were filled most of the time with cars that had disabled placards.  For five hours of the day, all fourteen spaces were occupied by cars with disabled placards.

Although the meter rate was $4 an hour, the meters earned only 32¢ an hour in collections because most of the time the meters were occupied by cars that paid nothing.  There’s a terrific financial incentive to abuse disabled placards as a free parking passes.  Raising meter rates will further increase the incentive to abuse placards.

I think the city ought to have more frequent stakeouts to observe cars with placards and ask drivers when they return for the identification that comes with the placards.  One city, Alexandria VA, did that because they are thinking of ending free parking at meters for placard users.

The police staked out a sample of cars with placards parked at meters and found that 90 percent of the drivers were illegally using the placards.

Some people are willing to cheat the system because they’re not willing to pay for parking.  TV reporters and Los Angeles Times reporters have often interviewed placard abusers who are quite shameless, often complaining that the meters cost too much. The city ought to do more to penalize people who abuse placards.

DN – We’ve talked a lot about the concerns of individual drivers, but what about the businesses?  Do businesses have something to worry about?

DS – If ExpresPark achieves the desired result of one open space per block, then it should help businesses. If parking prices are too high, and there are too many vacant spaces, then businesses lose customers, the employees lose jobs and the state loses sales tax revenue.  If the prices are too low, and there are no vacant spaces, everyone says “It’s impossible to park!”  Drivers cruising for cheap curb parking congest traffic, waste fuel, pollute the air, and interfere with pedestrians and cyclists, and that makes it even harder to stop and shop there.

There’s another reason why ExpressPark will help businesses.  Buses can get mired in traffic congestion caused by drivers who are cruising for underpriced curb parking. When the bus service slows down, some bus riders will start avoiding the downtown altogether. If ExpressPark works the way the city intends, and there are one or two open spaces per block, everybody can win.

There’s another feature of ExpressPark that can help traffic.  In San Francisco, when there will be a special event, such as the Gay Pride Parade, that draws a lot of people in cars, they can raise the price of parking on adjacent streets on that day only, to prevent cruising. You don’t want to charge less for on-street parking than off-street parking during these events because that underpricing creates the incentive to cruise for the the curb spaces.

DS – Often, the people who make that argument are pushing poor people out in front of them like human shields.  They say, “Don’t charge for parking because it will hurt poor people.” What they really mean is, “Don’t charge for parking because I don’t want to pay it.”

The poorest people can’t afford cars, and they won’t pay anything for Express Park.  Their lives will improve because the city will have more money to pay for public services and the bus system will run better.  The buses that they ride in won’t be mired in traffic caused by cars cruising for parking.

On one hand, I understand where the Councilmen who asked the City to report on this issue are coming from.  I have a friend who has worked tirelessly to make the city safer for pedestrians who also sometimes allows guests to park on the street in front of the garage.  I also used to have neighbors who literally parked their car in front of their driveway everyday.  In fact, I was surprised to hear that it wasn’t already legal considering how heavily other parking laws were enforced in the Fairfax area at the same time my then-neighbors broke the law with impunity.

Even UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, probably the top critic of free-parking in the world, offered that Manhattan Beach already has a “park in front of your own driveway” program and there haven’t been any major difficulties reported.

On the other hand, there are drawbacks to such a program beyond creating a permit program that isn’t a nightmare for parking enforcement officers who will have to deal with not just block-by-block parking permits, but also house-by-house ones.

On blocks where many permits are allowed, it will create a very inhospitable environment for pedestrians.  For starters, it will look foreboding, a row of cars running uninterrupted up and down the street at certain times of the day.  But more importantly, every car parked in front of a driveway eliminates a mid-block crossing.  Thus, a system of creating more space for cars to park could also impair the pedestrian environment.  The problem created would make life hardest for the elderly or disabled, and could be fatal for young children who’s line of sight could be impaired.

Photo: Stacey Conrad/Flickr

A second issue?  While the community as a whole won’t see a payoff for allowing someone to rent public space.  The CVC doesn’t allow municipalities to charge more than the cost of the program for the permits, in other words there is no way for the city to recoup the loss of the public space, just the cost of paying the staff who allow the rental of the public space.  Yes, the asphalt in front of someone’s driveway is publicly owned.  One would hope that such a program could create a small fund for streetscape and other improvements to mitigate the impacts of increased car parking, both on that street and that it encourages more car ownership, but it doesn’t appear that state law allows such a move.

The last problem is the most obvious, the program encourages more car usage by increasing the public space put aside for car parking.  A lack of car parking in a residential area that has street parking and driveways is a sign that there are too many cars in that area.  Rather than try to provide even more parking, with some drawbacks and no benefits to the community at-large, it would be better to try and think of ways to reduce the demand for car ownership in the area.  Providing more parking seems like treating a symptom more than the problem.

If the city ever gets around to ticketing them, these drivers in Lincoln Park could see some stiffer fines. Photo: Ubrayj02/flickr

In 2009, the City of Los Angeles began making life a little harder for parking scofflaws by raising the fees for various offenses for the first time in years.  In 2010, the City again “adjusted” the fees upward and a new report from the City Attorney shows that the city is considering another increase in what is becoming an annual tradition.  The City Council Transportation Committee will vote on whether to approve even higher parking ticket fees on Wednesday before the full Council considers them later this month.

For example, if one were to park their car on a sidewalk, as is apparently fashionable among UCLA students in part of Westwood, it would have cost $50 in 2009 before the first increase in ticket costs.  Over the last two years, the price increased to $55 then up to $60.  If the City Council acts on this proposal, which has already received the tacit approval of the Mayor, the price would rise again to $63, and increase of 26% over just over two and a half years.

While there are a lot of great reasons to raise the rates on people who break the law, this particular rate increase is to keep the city from digging itself an even deeper budget hole.  Not all of the funds from a parking ticket goes to the city enforcing the law.  Much of the funds go to the State of California.  A 2010 “adjustment” to the State budget is “reaollocating” $3 more to the State of California for each parking ticket issued anywhere in the State of California.  The City of Los Angeles is responding by raising the rates of the tickets it gives out to offset this grab by the state.

Unmentioned in all this legal discussion of parking rates is the report released in April by Comptroller Wendy Greuel showing that the City is negligent on collecting fees from repeat scofflaws.  Her office estimated that lack of follow-up is costing the city $15 million annually, which is about 11% of the total amount of tickets given out.

Overall, total revenue for the city from parking tickets has stayed relatively flat despite the increases. In fiscal year 2007-08 it collected about $127 million in total revenue, a year later about $133.6 million and last fiscal year about $131.8 million.

Photo:Boing Boing

It is doubtful that the media will give the same attention to today’s report, “Audit of the City’s Parking Meter Collection Process“ by City Comptroller Wendy Greuel as it did the “Gold Card” report a couple of weeks ago or the “Parking Cops Taking Part in a Porn Video” report on NBC from earlier this year, but the most recent report might be the most damning.  The city really doesn’t know how many parking meters it has?  Among the findings:

• The city doesn’t know how many parking meters it currently owns.  They think its around 36,000 but they’re not sure.  It sort of makes you wonder how the Department can even claim that its maximizing revenue from the parking program.
• The city purchased bad “hand held meter reading devices” which cost the city $200,000 a year in maintenance.  This again leads to questions about whether the city is maximizing parking revenue.  The devices which inventory the collections routinely break.
• LADOT’s contract management is poor.  Contractors collect the funds from meters, but charge the city whether the meter is broken or not.  While meter readers are supposed to report broken meters, they usually don’t.
• Because the city collects fees on a calendar schedule, more frequently used meters are collected from too infrequently and other meters could actually go longer without seeing an attendant.

Maximizing parking revenue has been a hot topic in City Hall as the Mayor has pushed a privitization plan for city garages that was torpedoed by the Council.  In the wake of that proposal, more Council Members discussed how to improve revenue flow from parking.  City Council Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl has pushed the issue, referring to parking revenue as “gold in the gutter.”

While the “Gold Card” Audit initially brought a political response from the Mayor’s Office.  Today, the LADOT sounded more humble and accepting of Greuel’s findings. 

“”The Department agrees with the findings and recommendations in the Controller’s audit.  We’ve already implemented many of the recommendations and have replaced most of the older meters with new “Card and Coin” meters and pay stations that automatically advise if service is required.  Additionally, the Department is looking at collection frequencies to maximize efficiency,” writes Bruce Gillman, the public relations director for LADOT.

While the report does recognize the improvements gained from the new meters and pay stations, it closes the report with fifteen more recommendations for the agency to follow.  Among the most urgent action items were discovering the exact number of meters and devising a way to maintain an accurate count, periodically monitor and analyze
collection frequencies of subzones with the goal of setting the frequencies at their optimum number, and establish a formal and documented plan for filing and maintaining documents related to daily collection records and .support for the invoices.

Wendy Greuel is looking over LADOT's shoulder.

The Mayor’s Office responded by mockingly reminding the Comptroller that as City Council Transportation Committee Chair, she had been briefed on the program several times and as Council Woman for the 2nd District had staff call the line several times.  However, by Friday afternoon, Mayor Villaraigosa ordered LADOT to end the GCD, which it promptly did.  A call to the GCD hotline now directs you to a recorded message by Villaraigosa extolling the values of transparent government.

In her report, available here, Greuel wrote of the Gold Card line:

This appears to suggest that you need political pull to expedite the investigation of a ticket.  The GCD canceled approximately 1,000 tickets over the two year period we reviewed without comprehensive policies or procedures guiding cancellations, suggesting a less than transparent process.

Greuel hit political gold with her report, tieing in many people’s favorite complaints with government: parking policy, political favoritism and government transparency, or a lack thereof.  There are several things, both about city politics and parking policy that can be learned from this spat.

Lesson 1: The LADOT is an agency that clearly needs reform.  This is the second audit in five weeks of the agency’s parking policy that has found the management of the parking program in need of some fixing.  While there may be some value to letting elected officials’ offices work directly on fixing bogus tickets, the lack of a paper trail on many of the “fixed” tickets suggests the LADOT was going for the path of least resistance.  KCET, who actually did some real reporting on this issue, showed how one scofflaw driver got tickets fixed by just annoying Council staff.

Lesson 2: The LADOT is an agency that clearly needs reform.  This is the third audit in five weeks that shows a Department that is under performing.  Joining the two parking audits is an audit detailing missed opportunities in spending federal stimulus funds.

Lesson 3: Los Angeles’ “vehicle fleet” program is a program that clearly needs reform.  L.A. Streetsblog has suggested several ways to reform the bloated “take-home” and office vehicle fleets as did Greuel’s predecessor Laura Chick.  Now we have another reason, the current system encourages scofflaw behavior by City staff.  L.A. Weekly reports that “‘Protective plate holders’ — those public officials allowed to get plates that hide their information from police and parking officers — have basically had a get-out-of-jail free card when it comes to parking tickets.”  Since there’s no official record of who is using these “publicly owned” vehicles, there is no way of charging scofflaw city staff.

Lesson 4: Wendy Greuel seems to be on the outs with the Mayor’s Office.  Back in the Spring of 2009, Greuel ran for Comptroller on the Mayor’s slate of candidates.  In July of 2009, at the last meeting of the City Council Transportation Committee which she chaired before becoming Comptroller, the LADOT lavished praise on the Chair and presented her with an award for her years of working together.  Then General Manager Rita Robinson even joked that she looked forward to being audited.

Those days are over.

The Mayor’s Office first responded to the audit by pointing out that Greuel, despite her claim of being “shocked,” was well aware of the program from her time on the Council and released record of her Council staff using the line.  This of course told the public nothing of the value of the program, and did almost nothing to stop the media storm that was already ensuing.  It was an attempt to knock some of the luster off Greuel’s image as she begins a run for Mayor.

Lesson 5: The City needs help negotiating contracts.  If a ticket was “fixed” through the GCR, the city was still charged a fee by the company in charge of collecting the parking fees.  In other words, the city was paying Allied Computer Services for tickets that had ceased to exist.

BRAINS!!! Or market-rate car parking profits! One or the other. Image: Dead Rising

These offers included a proposal to sell the parking garages for an upfront payment of over $200 million, similar to the proposals that were rejected by the City Council.  There are also convoluted Lease-Leaseback transactions that involve considerable financial engineering.  But again, they all appear to involve upfront cash in return for the ability to operate the parking garages.

The CAO report, embedded at the bottom of Humperville’s story, lists four options that the City Council might want to consider in a closed door session.  They include a $200 million offer to lease the garages for fifty years, a series of lease-leaseback agreements where the city receives and upfront payment but then leases back the garage from the private partner, and creating a city-wide management contract that would require the winning bidder to pay off the city’s parking lot debt.

We should stress that at this point, the Council hasn’t responded to the CAO’s report, but if the city is going to move forward (again) with privatizing city-controlled lots, it doesn’t mean that they can’t get a good deal out of a potential lease.  If the Council, CAO and Mayor’s Office can answer these four questions, which Streetsblog has presented before, then Los Angeles could be the first city in the country to have a “public-private-partnership” involving the leasing of parking spaces in the country.

How does Los Angeles avoid becoming the next Chicago?

The best known parking lease plan in America was the leasing of metered and street parking spaces in Chicago.  To put it mildly, Chicago got fleeced.  Morgan Stanley has raised parking rates and already recouped their initial investment.  The next seventy three years of their lease will be pure profit.  Children not even born will have grandchildren paying for this sweetheart deal because the Chicago politicians were too scared to raise meter rates on their own.

Rather than outsourcing profits, why doesn’t the city just raise the rates at these garages?

Business groups in Hollywood, Westwood and the Downtown have fought previous  privatization plans, because they believe that subsidized parking is key to local business models.  Drivers and businesses basically went on the warpath after the city raised meter rates and installed smart meters in 2009.

These businesses and advocates are basically arguing for a subsidy for parking their car.  If the city believes a private operator can make enough profits to temporarily fix the city’s budget, it means that it believes that the operators are going to do so by raising the rates.  In other words, the city hasn’t been pricing its spaces at market value and has been subsidizing the cost of parking in city owned garages.

In a recent editorial, the Daily News basically calls advocates of market rate parking who believe the Council has the guts to do this their own dayreamers:

And those who think the City Council will on its own make the financially responsible but politically difficult choice of raising rates and ending parking subsidies have their heads in the sand. The council has consistently balked at making hard choices for the good of many when confronted by the protests of the few.

But outsourcing the political will to adjust parking costs to meet the market rate did not shield Chicago pols from public outrage when rates went up and the profits went to Morgan Stanley instead of the City of Chicago.  People who think that the beneficiaries of subsidized parking won’t get mad at the city when rates go up have their heads in the same theoretical sand.

If the city believes these garages aren’t something that can raise revenue, and believes that they are going to fleece the private operator; that means these garages are a bad use of public spaces.  Land is one of the most valuable resources in the city, and if we’re wasting some of it on parking, and the city doesn’t mind losing control of the land, our next question is obvious.

Why aren’t we looking at just selling the land outright?  If someone wants to operate a parking lot, fine.  If someone wants to use the land for something else, why not?

And here’s the last question, and one that’s been so ignored that no leasing plan has even been heard by the City Council Transportation Committee.  What impact will leasing these garages have on local traffic circulation and any long-term reforms that future mayors or Councils might want to implement?

Nobody is discussing this, other than the below-market rate advocates who worry the increased rates will drive away business.  A study by LADOT or some other parking expert, should be a prerequisite before any city makes a plan to lease their public parking.

The Oakland Uptown Project is often used as an example of progressive infill development in Northern California.

The only Assembly Member to speak on the legislation was Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who authored the legislation. Also testifying in favor were Meea Kang, from the California Infill Developers Association, Mark Christian from the American Institute of Architects, Ethan Elkind, a researcher with UCLA and Cal-Berkley, and Christine Minnehan representing both the Western Center for Law and Poverty and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.  The NRDC, Policy in Motion, Creative Housing Associates and California Infill Builder’s Association also voiced support for the proposal.

Kang commented that reducing the parking requirements will make it easier and less expensive for developers to invest in transit oriented communities.   Another developer testified that he spends “90% of his time” figuring out the parking for new development and 10% on the other community benefits.

While Minnehan recognized the importance of reforming the state’s parking requirements, she expressed the same concerns that Public Counsel expressed to Streetsblog last week.  First, A.B. 710, as written, undermines existing legislation that encourages developers to include a 5% set-aside for affordable housing in exchange for reduced parking minimums in some circumstances.  Second, Minnehan worried that by making it less expensive to develop near transit that many rent-controlled units in urban areas would be demolished to make way for more expensive development.

Skinner touted her record supporting affordable housing and vowed to make sure her legislation doesn’t have any unintended consequences.  Earlier this week, she accepted an amendment that limits the scope of A.B. 71 by narrowly defining “transit intensive area.”

“transit intensive area” means  an area that is within one-half mile of a major transit stop or  high-quality transit corridor included in a regional transportation  plan. A major transit stop is as defined in Section 21064.3 of the  Public Resources Code, except that, for purposes of this section, it also includes major transit stops that are included in the applicable  regional transportation plan. For purposes of this section, a  high-quality transit corridor means a corridor with fixed route bus  service with service intervals no longer than 15 minutes during peak  commute hours. A project shall be considered to be within one-half  mile of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor if all  parcels within the project have no more than 25 percent of their area  farther than one-half mile from the stop or corridor and if not more  than 10 percent of the residential units or 100 units, whichever is  less, in the project are farther than one-half mile from the stop or  corridor.

All four Committee members present, Chair Norma J. Torres, Vice Chair Toni Atkins and Members Steven Bradford and Ben Hueso voted to advance the legislation.

Photo: Timothy Felsrow/Flickr

As the city considers a proposal that would increase bicycle parking at new developments, a second progressive parking proposal is beginning to move through the public process.  This draft ordinance, available here, would allow for neighborhood parking districts to be created that would allow much greater flexibility for car parking requirements for new development.

The “Modified Parking Requirement District” (MPRD) ordinance creates tools that would allow neighborhoods to create custom parking districts.  To earn this designation, a district would have to be approved by an environmental review, the City Planning Commission and the City Council, assuming this draft ordinance even becomes law.  The first step to becoming law will be a hearing of the City Planning Commission in City Hall at 10:00 A.M. on April 28.  Traditionally, when Los Angeles tries to tinker with its parking policy the defenders of the status quo come out in full force.

Will Wright, the director of government affairs for the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter, sees value in the proposal.  “In effort to protect the diversity of our neighborhoods, additional planning tools are needed that will allow communities to have greater flexibility in determining the type of parking regulations they’d like to adopt.  In my opinion, the proposed MPRD ordinance will enable neighborhoods to select a parking typology that most effectively compliments their character and enhances their livability.”

Apparently the City Planning Department agrees.  In the draft ordinance’s F.A.Q., they criticize the “one size fits all” approach to parking requirements that the city currently has.  “A onesize- fits-all approach to parking and the City’s increasingly complex and location-specific parking problems necessitate that the City be able to regulate parking on a community basis. The MPR is intended to provide flexibility to address parking on a community basis by allowing one or more changes to the citywide parking standards within the district.”

If this ordinance passes, what changes could the city actually allow to local parking?  The draft ordinance lists some possibilities:

1. Decreased Parking Requirements: Recently expired CRA districts that had offered parking reductions to incentivize development can continue to provide reduced parking.
2. Increased Parking Requirements: Areas with an abundance of outdoor dining and limited street parking could benefit. Since the Zoning Code does not require parking for outdoor dining, this tool could exempt certain areas from that provision.
3. Off-site parking: Denser areas with ample public transit could benefit from allowing a use to provide parking across the street or down the block. Often projects cannot be built since smaller, irregularly shaped parcels cannot accommodate a building and its required parking.
4. Change of Use Parking Standards: Varying parking requirements for different uses can be an obstacle when one type of business is being replaced by another. Grandfathering in the existing parking for a new use would alleviate this problem.
5. Commercial Parking Credits: Areas with older buildings without off-street parking but ample on-street parking would benefit from the use of city-owned parking credits. Allowing business operators to use parking credits would allow new businesses to open more quickly.
6. Universal Valet: Popular nighttime destinations could benefit from regulated valet services.
7. Proximity to Municipal Garages: Areas that are located near public garages might require less parking for individual projects.
8. Parking Reduction Permit: Areas with ample transit could permit parking reductions for individual projects when they incorporate transportation alternatives.

As the ordinance moves forward, Streetsblog will continue to cover it and we’ll post a copy of the Planning Commission agenda when it is posted online.

Photo: See El Photo/Flickr/

With the Mayor’s proposal to lease out the maintenance, revenue collection, and profits of the city garages killed by the City Council earlier this year, the city has begun to move forward with other plans to maximize the revenue and efficiency of the city’s publicly owned parking spaces and lots.

On Monday, the City Council held a joint hearing of its Transportation and Budget & Finance Committee to discuss how to move forward with a parking plan that will help the city close its budget deficit and manage and maintain its parking facilities.  The Mayor’s office confirmed to Streetsblog that at this time there are no plans to move forward with any more leasing or privatization plans, although the city is looking to renew its contract with the current operators for its public parking structures.

Councilman Tom LaBonge made the case that parking and congestion are the most important issues that the Council deals with:

“How many people have been effected by crime in the last year?  I see two hands.  How many have been impacted by traffic and parking in the last 24 hours?  Everyone is raising their hands.”

The LADOT released its plans for future improvements to the city’s parking infrastructure in a annually updated five-year plan at the committee.   The press focused on a plan to continue to double the number of  “smart meters” which accept credit cards and can handle higher parking fees from 10,000 to 20,000 in the next year.  The city estimates that it will yield an additional $9 million in revenue in addition to the $50 million brought in last year.

All revenue generated by the city’s parking program is put into maintenance and expansion of facilities and then what’s left is transferred to the general fund.  One of the basic tenants of UCLA economics professor (and parking rock star) Donald Shoup is that funds generated by parking meters and garages should be reinvested in the communities where the parking is located.  While the city hasn’t seriously discussed following this model, at least one Councilman expressed some interest.  The Daily News quotes Westside Councilman Bill Rosendahl:

“My question is how can we get more revenue out of these parking meters,” Councilman Bill Rosendahl said. “And, if we do, we should make sure the areas where it is generated also benefits from parking.”

The city also wishes to expand its ExpressPark program, a pilot program in congestion parking for the Downtown which uses variable meter technology to set parking meter prices based on demand.  In a very Shoupian dynamic, the meter rates are supposed to insure that there will almost always be an open space for people looking to park at the street level and maximize revenue at the same time.  The cost to implement this program was $18.5 million, with $15 million coming from the federal government.

We should note that under ExpressPark, it is not uncommon for meter rates to be set at below what the rate was before the “congestion parking” went into effect.  Donald Shoup, whose theories and studies on parking policy have been the basis for ExpressPark and other programs, has documented plenty of places in Los Angeles where street parking is priced too high and motorists choose to park in neighborhoods instead.  Under a city-wide ExpressPark system, the cost of these meters would be reduced.

At this point, LADOT is not reccomending, and there was little enthusiasm from the Council Members present, to expand the program beyond the Downtown.  Throughout the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the city will monitor the success and challenges of the program Downtown.  If the program is deemed successful, DOT will proposeto expand the program, including the development of a Central Management System so the city can manage a larger, city-wide, system on its own.

Other issues that were addressed included the need to hire more people to maintain monitor the parking areas, as city staff estimate that each person in charge of enforcing parking laws actually provides a net revenue increase to the city and adding 1,500 new meters to loading zones and other areas identified in studies and also have community support.  Staff mentioned the area surrounding Cal-State Northridge, in the 12th Council-manic District represented by Greig Smith.

Rendering of Westwood Station without car parking. Image via presentation by Expo Authority posted online by Gökhan Esirgen.

Now that the Expo Construction Authority has the legal green light to begin construction of Phase II of the Expo Line, it can move on to other issues.  Responding to a motion at the February 5, 2010 meeting of the Expo Construction Authority by Zev Yaroslavsky, Expo staff have put together a presentation listing the pros and cons of having station parking at the Expo Station at Westwood and Exposition.  The “no-parking” option has been endorsed by many of the groups backing the Expo Line such as Light Rail for Cheviot and Friends 4 Expo Transit.  The Construction Authority Board is expected to vote on whether to provide commuter parking  at their March 18 meeting.

By removing commuter parking from the design, the Westwood/Exposition Station is surrounded by open space.  At the north side of the station, an additional 54,000 square feet would be created.  As staff notes, that is roughly the same size as a football field.  The south side would have “only” 23,750 square feet and a “kiss and ride” drop off area.  While the above rendering shows a gigantic brown squares, this space could be filled with amenities such as coffee shops, food trucks or other features one associates with first class transit station.

There would be some parking with the station.  20 spaces would be reserved for people visiting or living in the community, to replace some of the street parking lost by the station.  Very short-term parking will be allowed in the Kiss-and-Ride area for people waiting to pick up an Expo passenger.

By comparison, the option with parking wouldn’t have space for any of those things.  But, it will have lots of low cost car parking.

That's a lot of asphalt.

The plan with parking calls for 170 parking spaces, with access to the stations from Westwood, Overland and Selby Avenues.  As you can see, there is room for landscaping in the project, but not really room for much else.

So here’s the decision that has to be made, does the Construction Authority value 170 parking spaces over station amenities, open space, maintaining a permeable surface around the station, limiting the environmental damage caused by increasing car trips to the area and encouraging people to walk and bike to the station.

When the Expo Board posts their agenda, Streetsblog will post it.  In the meantime, if you have an opinion on which station design you like best, you can email the Board of Directors for the Construction Authority through this website.

Image by Gehl Architects

Making Cities for People, the official blog of Copenhagen super-architects Gehl Architects, gives us another look at the Figueroa Corridor as it is and as it could be in South Los Angeles. The above image shows how our city’s lifeblood is literally being drained away by the collective demand for car parking. Even Gehl’s team, which has worked on street projects around the world, seems taken aback by the over-abundance of car parking offered in Los Angeles.

Honestly, I don’t think that I need to even say anything about the image above. It speaks for itself and shows many of the problems facing the corridor that connects USC to the Downtown.

The image that accompanied Tuesday’s piece on the Figueroa corridor isn’t the only option for the street. Gehl’s team offers two more at Making Cities for People. One shows a vastly expanded pedestrian plaza and another shows a smaller pedestrian area and a separated bike lane. That these projects are earning the support of the CRA and local business community is a step forward for Los Angeles. Of course, actually building it is a much bigger one.

The images can be found at Making Cities for People and are available after the jump.

An expanded pedestrian plaza...

L.A.'s first separated bike lane.

Grosvenor Square, London, the site of Europe's first parking meter, shows how putting a price on parking clears up the street and makes parking available. Image: ITDP.

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Only still emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, however, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

With mass car-ownership fundamentally new for Europe, parking policy was practically non-existent. The first parking meter — an American invention — only made it to Europe in 1958, arriving in front of the American embassy in London. In most places, cars could park not only for free but wherever they wanted: on the sidewalk, in a public square.

When they realized that simply giving drivers free rein to park anywhere was untenable, Europeans attempted to build enough parking to meet the population’s galloping demand. Public space, from sidewalks to canals, was turned into parking space. Zoning forced all new development to use money and space for parking. All these concessions, however, only made European cities friendlier to cars and further drove up demand.

Today, however, all that is in the past. As outlined in the new report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, “Europe’s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation,” the continent is now leading the world when it comes to innovative, intelligent and sustainable parking policy [PDF].

Across Europe, cities have come to understand that oversupply or subsidy of parking leads to too much driving. The effect is considerable. In Vienna, for example, when the city began to charge for on-street parking, the number of vehicle kilometers traveled plummeted from 10 million annually to 3 million. In Munich, the introduction of a new parking management system has resulted in 1,700 fewer automobiles owned in the city center each year since 2000.

Zurich has emerged as a world leader on parking policy. Here, on-street parking was replaced with pedestrian space, likely to compensate for new off-street spaces. Image: ITDP.

Looking across the Atlantic offers a wide array of strategies to manage parking more effectively.

• Free daytime parking was eliminated completely in Munich. 95 percent of Paris’ roughly 50,000 free parking spaces were converted to paid spaces.
• Too often, the decision of how much parking to provide is disconnected from any other city goals. Not in Zurich. Under the terms of the city’s “Historischer Parkplatz Kompromiss,” each development is assigned a cap on the number of trips that can be made by car, which is controlled by the amount of parking provided onsite. The cap is determined by looking at the congestion and air quality in the immediate area.
• Parking maximums have replaced parking minimums in cities such as Zurich, Amsterdam and Strasbourg. The Swiss, Italian and British governments all recommend that local governments use maximums, in the words of the British government, to “promote sustainable transport choices, reduce the land-take of development, enable schemes to fit into central urban sites, promote linked-trips and access to development for those without use of a car, and to tackle congestion.”
• The idea behind parking minimums for commercial space is to ensure that employees of a new development don’t fill up all an area’s parking spaces. Logically, therefore, Hamburg decided that if enough employees at a company had a transit pass, that company should have to reduce the amount of parking it provides.
• Hard caps on the amount of parking downtown are in place in Hamburg, Zurich, and Budapest. No one can build a new off-street space unless the city agrees to take away an on-street space. Despite rising prosperity and car ownership, the number of parking spaces in the center of Hamburg has remained at 30,000 since 1976.
• Regulating parking only works if those regulations are enforced, a job that Europeans have made easier through new technology. Across France, magnetic sensors are employed to determine when cars overstay time limits. Amsterdam uses a fleet of vans with license plate-reading cameras to track violations.
• On-street parking rates better reflect market demand. In London, rates go up to £4.40 an hour ($7.04), and in Amsterdam up to €5 ($6.75). In New York City, by comparison, rates only go up to $3.75.
• Parking management has been closely tied to Europe’s largest bike-sharing systems. In Paris and Barcelona, bike-sharing stations replaced thousands of on-street spaces, and in Barcelona, all parking revenue goes directly to supporting bike-sharing.

Across Europe, there appears to be a much heavier emphasis on providing residential parking permits, public-private partnerships to operate the parking system, and technological conveniences like pay-by-phone parking.

Cities like London and Paris are New York City’s competitors. While they move forward with these innovative programs, New York still forces its drivers and bus riders to sit behind a line of traffic cruising for a rare open space or holding out for one of the city’s many free on-street spaces. New York tacks the cost of unwanted parking onto every new office and residence. In commercial zones, meanwhile, parking spaces are commandeered for hours, reducing turnover and making deliveries a hassle. Not to mention the environmental and safety disasters of encouraging all those extra car trips.

The Mayor’s Office is thinking about tackling parking policy in this spring’s update of PlaNYC, and hopefully they’ll use this ITDP report to adapt some of Europe’s best ideas. Then again, they just bowed to motorist influence in the City Council over raising meter rates by just a quarter. Giving New York City’s parking policy the same U-turn that Europe took will apparently be quite the political lift.

The Hollywood Farmer's Market last February. Photo:Alex de Cordoba/Flickr

The uncertain future of the Hollywood Farmers Market has inspired much energy and advocacy that food and street advocates in Los Angeles can be proud of. Market operator See-LA rallied allies and supporters. Farmers’ market patrons flooded City Councilperson Eric Garcetti with messages of support for the market. Garcetti in turn helped extend the permit and is trying to negotiate a solution that preserves most of the markets’ existing footprint and access. But the controversy also raises a question that in turn suggests a way to save the market and others like it.

Who owns the streets?

Or, in this situation, why in the @#*^ can a single adjacent business veto the continuation of a farmers market that is one of the cornerstones of social life, healthy food access, and community supported agriculture in Los Angeles?

To be even more specific, why is the Board of Public Works giving residents and business owners adjacent to proposed farmers markets, street fairs and other special events a quasi-property right in the streets that lets them veto temporary closures of public streets?

I’m speaking of the requirement, in section VI.D. of  the City’s Street Closure Provisions and Application Procedures. http://bsspermits.lacity.org/spevents/common/street_closure_codes.htm#6

A petition must be submitted indicating that occupants of at least 51 percent of the residences or businesses within the closure area have no objections to and support the closure. Petitions must be signed by the owner, manager, assistant manager, or lessee of the residences or businesses impacted by the closure.

It’s not because buying property adjacent to a public street gives you a legal right to use that street 100 percent of the time.

It’s not because such petitions are the only way to ensure that the interests of local residents are considered when the City receives an application for a special street-closing event. Section II of the Street Closure Provisions requires the Bureau of Street Services to consider the

A. Impact of the proposed closure on residents, occupants or business persons of the block.

B. Impact of the proposed closure on the accessibility of emergency vehicles into the closure areas.  

C. Impact of the proposed closure on vehicular traffic such as circulation, traffic movement and availability of alternate routes for traffic.        

D. Potential interference with commercial and business activities in the immediate vicinity.

E. Conditions existing within the surrounding area that, when occurring in conjunction with a street closure, might create a hardship or an unnecessary inconvenience to the general public or persons residing in the area.” So local interests are well represented in the decision making criteria.

City Council President (and Hollywood's Council Man) and former Councilman Michael Woo hangout at the Market. Photo:Green L.A. Girl

It’s not because all municipalities give property owners veto over proposed special events and street closures. In San Francisco, for example, all interested parties can come comment at a public hearing but no petitions are required. http://www.sfmta.com/cms/vclos/strclos.htm (Looking this up, I noticed that organizers of events in San Francisco with an expected attendance of 2000 + are also required to provide monitored bike parking. That sounds like a good idea for Los Angeles to implement).

It’s also not because the elected representatives of the City of Los Angeles have mandated that a majority of adjacent property owners be able to block street events. The City’s municipal code requires that

the result of petitions, required or otherwise {emphasis mine}, circulated in residential or commercial areas impacted by the event” “shall be included among all the relevant criteria used in reviewing applications for Special Event Permits.”

Los Angeles Municipal Code. Chapter IV Public Welfare. Section 41.20 d.2.K. So the City could give applicant the option to submit petitions, or require some petitions but nor disqualify applicants who fail to reach a magical 51 percent threshold.

I assume that the requirement is in place to avoid controversial events and to out-source responsibility for public outreach and discussion of proposed street closures from the agency to event organizers. It is usually a good thing for street event sponsors to go door to door talking to neighbors as a way to gain buy-in and spread the word about public events. But the threat to block the Hollywood Farmers’ Market from receiving a new permit shows that the mandatory nature of petition process can give neighbors excessive leverage when there are a small number of property owners fronting a street.

Hopefully negotiations will allow the Hollywood Farmers Market to continue in its current location.

Whatever the outcome, I’d encourage the Board of Public Works and/ or The City Council to change the 51 percent requirement to avoid any other important street events from being blocked by self-interested property owners. Here are some potential solutions.

1. Eliminate mandatory petitions. Make petitions from residents/ businesses in the closure area voluntary rather than mandatory. Applicants will still be encouraged to get as many petitions as possible to demonstrate local support, but this would not be a precondition to receive a permit.
2. Eliminate veto by a small number of neighbors. Eliminate mandatory required petitions from 51% or more of adjacent residents/ businesses requirement when there are ten or fewer adjacent residents/ owners in the closure area.
3. Waive petition requirement for farmers markets. Eliminate the requirement to submit mandatory petitions from 51% or more of residents/ businesses in the closure area for all applications for permits for certified farmers markets.
4. Expand petitions beyond the closure area to underline that the public at large ‘own the streets.’ Require petitions from 51% or more of adjacent residents/ businesses OR from at least 51 individual residents/ property owners/ organizations from anywhere who support the event/ plan to attend the event. Andres Duany’s suggestion that “You can’t confuse neighbors with the community as a whole” and that public participation for new projects should focus on a random sample of the community rather than on local residents, seems persuasive to me in the case of street events.

I’d also eliminate section II.F from the Street Closure Provisions and Application Procedures. It requires  “Verification that the applicant or sponsor owns, leases or rents property on the proposed block to be closed or can obtain and submit a letter of co-sponsorship from an individual who meets those criteria.” While a easier threshold than the petitions, in a street with one property owner  this too becomes a veto over proposed events.

Every year in the neighborhood I grew up in, a nearby residential street was blocked off for an annual street fair to commemorate the year their street had accidentally been left off the city map. There’s nothing wrong with a community taking pride in their streets or with a local voice in how streets are used. But this healthy localism shouldn’t be debased into a property right to vital public space. Eliminating property owners’ veto over street closings/ events would help ensure that public streets are used for the benefit of the broader public.

Photo:Los Angeles Times

Later today, behind closed doors, the Los Angeles City Council will meet to debate and discuss whether to put out to bid a plan to lease all of the city controlled parking lots throughout the city for fifty years.  The debate over whether the city should proceed has been almost completely centered around whether or not the cost to residents and businesses of increasing parking costs will be worth the fiduciary benefit to city coffers.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has written the City Council urging the Members to allow the city to solicit bids to lease the lots for fifty years or else the city would be forced to layoff and/or furlough more civil employees.  He cites a report by the City Administrative Officer and Chief Legislative Analyst that basically says that the Council has a choice between approving a “public-private partnership” to lease the lots or being responsible for scores of furloughs.  His position is further boosted by editorials that appear in today’s Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News urging a quick sale of city lots.

Nobody is debating whether or not the city is in a dire financial state, but rather whether a plan to basically privatize a public resource is a good idea.  Below are 4 questions that the Council needs to know the answers to if they’re serious analyzing the proposal and not just being a rubber stamp.

The best known parking lease plan in America was the leasing of metered and street parking spaces in Chicago.  To put it mildly, Chicago got fleeced.  Morgan Stanley has raised parking rates and already recouped their initial investment.  The next seventy three years of their lease will be pure profit.  Children not even born will have grandchildren paying for this sweetheart deal because the Chicago politicians were too scared to raise meter rates on their own.

Thus, the first question should be: How does Los Angeles avoid becoming the next Chicago?

And let’s be honest, a closed-door discussion of the issue doesn’t inspire confidence that our city’s leaders are confident they can get the best deal from a parking agency.

Business groups in Hollywood, Westwood and the Downtown have fought the privatization plan, but they’re basically doing so because they believe that subsidized parking is key to local business models.  Drivers and businesses basically went on the warpath after the city raised meter rates and installed smart meters in 2009.  City Watch will never be happy with any deal that gives the city more money.

But here’s the rub.  Those people are basically arguing for a subsidy for parking their car.  If the city believes a private operator can make enough profits to temporarily fix the city’s budget, it means that it believes that the operators are going to do so by raising the rates.  In other words, the city hasn’t been pricing its spaces at market value and has been subsidizing the cost of parking in city owned garages.

So here’s the second question: Rather than outsourcing profits, why doesn’t the city just raise the rates at these garages?

In today’s editorial, the Daily News basically calls advocates of market rate parking who believe the Council has the guts to do this their own dayreamers:

And those who think the City Council will on its own make the financially responsible but politically difficult choice of raising rates and ending parking subsidies have their heads in the sand. The council has consistently balked at making hard choices for the good of many when confronted by the protests of the few.

But outsourcing the political will to adjust parking costs to meet the market rate did not shield Chicago pols from public outrage when rates went up and the profits went to Morgan Stanley instead of the City of Chicago.  That the beneficiaries of subsidized parking won’t get mad at the city when rates go up have their heads in the same theoretical sand.

If the city believes these garages aren’t something that can raise revenue, and believes that they are going to fleece the private operator; that means these garages are a bad use of public spaces.  Land is one of the most valuable resources in the city, and if we’re wasting some of it on parking, and the city doesn’t mind losing control of the land, our next question is obvious.

Why aren’t we looking at just selling the land outright?  If someone wants to operate a parking lot, fine.  If someone wants to use the land for something else, why not?

And here’s the last question, and one that’s been so ignored that the leasing plan hasn’t even been heard by the City Council Transportation Committee.  What impact will leasing these garages have on local traffic circulation and any long-term reforms that future mayors or Councils might want to implement?

Nobody is discussing this, other than the below-market rate advocates who worry the increased rates will drive away business.  A study by LADOT or some other parking expert, should be a prerequisite before any city makes a plan to lease their public parking.

Coming Soon? Photo: Get Reading

The motion just asks for city staff to, “the City should examine the benefits of allowing individuals to park in front of their driveways as a way to increase residential parking supply.”  My honest first reaction to this motion was disbelief.  At our first residence, our neighbors parked in front of their driveway everyday.  And the parking police were out in force because it was a neighborhood with strict parking permit requirements.

From a parking perspective, the trick will be how to advertise the permit system that would be required well enough to make it clear to other drivers that you can’t just block people’s driveways at will.  Some areas have very limited parking, and making best use of the lane, most of which is already being used for street parking, make some sense.  As long as it doesn’t end up impacting people’s ability to get in and out of their driveways because of any confusion that might be created.

That being said, the part of the street in front of someone’s driveway is a public space and should not just be given away, regardless of the local parking issues.  The permits should be appropriately priced to reflect the value of the land.  Unlike the current permit system, which allows vehicles to park along certain blocks without being ticketed, this system is essentially leasing a car parking space to a homeowner or renter.  The fee for such a space were it in a parking lot would be in the $100 a month range, and it should be for this proposal as well.

But funds from the permit shouldn’t be thrown into the black hole that is our city’s general fund, they should be reinvested in the community from which they come.  Beautification, streetscaping and even repaving costs could be paid for by charging people to lease a public space.  This proposal could end up being a win for everyone in the communities where this is implemented, not just the ones who own more cars than they have space to store.

Two other motions caught my eye when reading through the agenda.

First is the much-publicized motion by Paul Krekorian to signalize the deadly crossing of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Archwood, which has claimed two lives in the past year and left another young woman with severe injuries, this Wednesday’s City Council Transportation Committee Hearing deals with two issues dear to every car driver’s heart: on street parking and hybrid vehicle incentives.

There’s also a a 2007 motion by Councilman Bernard Parks and Council Woman Jan Perry that seeks to make it easier for city employees to purchase hybrid vehicles by having the city enter into agreements with dealerships for discounted purchases.  The motion also encourages a change in state law that requires city’s to reduce automobile trips by asking that hybrid car trips be included as a reduction.

It’s a sign of the times how old-fashioned this motion seems, just three years after it was initially drafted.  The debate at City Hall has moved past clean cars and on to encouraging bicycling and transit, in large part to the Mayor’s embrace of Measure R, 30/10 and, more recently, safe cycling.

Personally, I have no problem with this motion because it also includes language to make it easier for employees to purchase transit passes.  But hopefully Chairman Rosendahl, or one of the other bike-friendly members of the committee, take a moment to add some language about entering into agreements with bike shops to make it easier for employees to get bikes as well.

Looks nice, from the inside. Photo: Myjasmynecannick.com

The debate over whether or not to allow a Fresh & Easy to open a new store on Crenshaw Boulevard at the intersection with 52nd Street with a large parking lot facing the street heads to the full City Council this Wednesday morning at 10:00 A.M.  The matter was moved to the Full Council by the Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee without recommendation, despite the development’s strong support from the local Councilman, Bernard Parks.

The City Council needs to approve the development as planned because the placement of the parking lot means that it would violate the Crenshaw Specific Plan, which was previously approved by the Council.  You can read about the proposed development, here.  One of the great ironies of this project, is that the Ford Dealership that used to be on the lot now owned by Fresh & Easy did have a storefront directly on the sidewalk, with the cars being inside the company.

To be clear, nobody is arguing that there shouldn’t be any car parking for the site, but that it should be pushed behind or above the store so that pedestrians don’t have to cross through a dangerous parking lot to get to the store itself.

The debate over the opening should have been avoided but instead we see a community divided over whether or not to allow the development to exempt itself from the Crenshaw Specific Plan and build a parking lot at street level between the sidewalk and the entrance.  The opening of a new store, especially one with the reputation of Fresh & Easy, ought to be something the community can celebrate together.  Instead, we have a fight over a parking lot. 

On one side, we have residents clamoring for the benefits such a store would bring to the Crenshaw Corridor.  On the other, we have residents demanding that the Specific Plan be adhered to and that Crenshaw be preserved as a walkable community as the community wants.  This entire debate could have been avoided if Tesco, the parent group of Fresh & Easy, had moved with a plan similar to the one other South L.A. stores have received.

Community groups, such as Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment (HOPE), have insisted that the lot be pushed behind or above the store so that the pedestrian environment along Crenshaw Boulevard is enhanced, not made more dangerous and less appealing.  A letter prepared by HOPE for the City Council can be found at the end of this article.

That being said, there are factions of the community that look forward to the arrival of the Fresh & Easy, parking issues be damned.  The Park Mesa Heights Community Council sees the development as an important part of the redevelopment plans for the region.  PMHCC has been at least as active in promoting the market to the neighborhood as HOPE has been in demanding that the plan follow the Crenshaw Specific Plan.  Naturally, supporters of the project have their own action alert to fill Council Chambers on Wednesday.

While the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing is uncertain, what is clear is that nobody benefits from a fight over parking and whether or not the developers is following the areas planning documents.  Even if Fresh & Easy wins on Wednesday, the ugly fight could be a blemish on the store that follows it for years.

All of that so that they could place a parking lot where it doesn’t belong.

Date:

City Council of Los Angeles

City Hall

200 N. Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012

RE: HOPE’s Appeal of the Proposed Fresh & Easy at 52^nd/Crenshaw (Council File: 10-1537)

Dear Honorable Council Members:

I’m writing this letter to express my support for the Crenshaw community’s efforts to encourage pedestrian oriented design principles in new developments on Crenshaw Boulevard.  In a city, where so many uses are auto-centric, the efforts of the Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment (“HOPE”) to create a pedestrian oriented area in their South L.A. community deserve commendation.

Developing people-friendly business corridors is important to creating green, safer and enjoyable streets, addressing global warming, and strengthening the local economy, which should increase city tax revenue.  These are the stated objectives of the City of Los Angeles, and I encourage you to put these goals into practice through the City Council’s land use decisions.

The Crenshaw community should not have to choose between a new grocer and compliance with the pedestrian orientated design guidelines of their Crenshaw Specific Plan.  They deserve both.  Don’t vote to short-change Crenshaw.  Please vote to support the long-term Crenshaw community pedestrian-oriented vision by:

1) Upholding the appeal by HOPE, and

2) Encouraging the developer to sit down with the group to come up with a design for the site that complies with the Crenshaw Specific Plan.

Sincerely,

__________________________

SENT TO: councilmember.reyes@lacity.org, councilmember.krekorian@lacity.org, councilmember.zine@lacity.org, councilmember.labonge@lacity.org, paul.koretz@lacity.org, councilmember.cardenas@lacity.org, councilmember.alarcon@lacity.org, councilmember.parks@lacity.org, councilmember.perry@lacity.org, councilmember.wesson@lacity.org, councilmember.rosendahl@lacity.org, councilmember.smith@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, councilmember.huizar@lacity.org, councilmember.hahn@lacity.org, patrice.lattimore@lacity.org

Cc: Winnifred Jackson, HOPE President (president@hydeparkhope.org)

Though U.S. cities have reconsidered their parking privatization plans in the wake of Chicago's bum deal, NYC Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith has defended it. Image: AP

When Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced that he was striking a deal to privatize his city’s 36,000 parking meters, it was a golden opportunity for transportation reform. If all went well, the deal could have cleared a political path for higher peak-hour meter rates, curbing double-parking and congestion-causing cruising.

But Chicago managed to completely bungle that opportunity, inking a contract that gave away billions of dollars in revenue to Morgan Stanley. That agreement, which was worked out behind closed doors and then rushed through the approval process, earned the city an up front payment of $1.15 billion while Morgan Stanley will earn ten times that amount, according to Bloomberg News. The city of Chicago could have earned nearly a billion more dollars up front had it just raised meter rates itself and bonded out the revenue, according to Chicago’s inspector general.

The details of the contract have also come back to haunt Chicago. The city can’t leave the contract for 75 years, and as the Urbanophile’s Aaron Renn has noted, that means any attempt by the city to re-purpose curb space for public use, bus or bike lanes, can’t proceed without Morgan Stanley’s permission.

Chicago’s bum deal seems to be leading many U.S. cities to revisit or even cancel their plans to privatize parking. Bloomberg News reports:

Chicago’s agreement for a Morgan Stanley partnership to run its parking meters for 75 years, expected to cost drivers $11.6 billion, has Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles rethinking their own deals.

Indianapolis, whose city council plans to vote tonight on a proposal with Xerox Co.’s Affiliated Computer Services, would rather take less money up front in favor of more total fees in its 50-year transaction. It also wants something Chicago didn’t get: exit clauses that let the city end the lease.

Those three cities are each looking to learn from Chicago in different ways. Indianapolis, as noted above, is leaving itself room to escape the contract and forgoing a big one-time payoff in favor of spreading out the revenue it will receive. Los Angeles, which is privatizing off-street lots, is rejecting a provision that would relinquish city control over rate hikes.

In Pittsburgh, the City Council has reacted even more strongly. They voted down a plan to lease their meters to JPMorgan, though Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is still pushing the plan, according to Bloomberg.

New Yorkers should keep a close eye on parking privatization plans in all of these cities. Public-private partnerships of this sort are gaining in popularity nationwide, and perhaps no figure in the country is more closely associated with the idea than our new deputy mayor, Stephen Goldsmith, who made his name by privatizing many of Indianapolis’s services when he served as mayor there.

Renn distinguishes Goldsmith’s deals from Chicago-style meter privatization by noting that he farmed out public services through competitive bids that regularly came up for renewal — a far cry from Chicago’s 75-year, one-shot “jackpot.” However, unlike civic leaders in Indy, Pittsburgh and L.A., Goldsmith has remained a believer in Chicago’s privatization.

In an article for Governing magazine this January, Goldsmith argued that the fundamentals of the Chicago deal were sound, even if a few details could have been worked out more smoothly. One red flag: The first “mistake” Goldsmith highlighted was a parking rate hike that Chicago enacted around the same time as the privatization. That may suggest that Goldsmith underestimates the potential of these parking deals for transportation reform while overstating their fiscal prudence.

Cervantes' sleeve. Photo: Jennifer Beatty

(Beatty is a self professed graphic design/cycling addict based in Burbank, CA. She is the creative workhorse behind Bandwagon Graphiks, designing anything for print and web with a vengeance. Cycling is her drug of choice and is known by her clients as the designer on a bike. Long difficult commutes and centuries are her passion)

Driving a car in Los Angeles guarantees you a few things: Traffic, an empty wallet, and parking tickets. Los Angeles’ streets are rivers bursting at the seams with fish – only these fish weigh 3,000 lbs and can kill you.  Riding bicycles reduces the fish population, while simultaneously improving road safety and saving you money. By advocating cycling, we can open peoples minds and show them that the bicycle is not a status symbol but a viable means of transportation.

Today, I had lunch with a friend in Studio City. We rode our bikes 3 miles in heavy afternoon traffic to get there, and we were fine. We sat down, ordered and about five minutes later I spotted something quite ironic in a city whose default mode of transportation can be a weapon of mass destruction. Twenty feet away, a parking enforcement officer approached a car at an expired meter on a bicycle. I did a double take. It seemed so ironic.

Advocate cycling, promote health and enforce some laws all in one fall swoop? Nah…couldn’t be. This officer was not my first interaction with a bicycle cop. I see them all the time. Most recently trying to keep up with Critical Mass. However, bicycle cops or similar law enforcers in this society do not seem to garner the same amount of respect as do officers in cars. Unless, that officer is adding a nice $52 ticket to your windshield – then you perk up and notice.

Another happy cyclist. Photo: Jennifer Beatty

I flagged the officer over and introduced myself.,  I wanted to know what he thought of his job and his view of how the city is working towards better laws and safety. I come to find out that Officer Cervantes is from LADOT, a city organization that has been in the news a lot lately – especially in the cycling blogosphere with all the talk of a new GM and how LADOT needs to shape up.

He first told me that LADOT has had a bicycle program with its traffic enforcement group for 11 years. In high traffic areas they ditch the cars and hop on bikes to add an unhappy envelope to your one’s car and ride on. Officer Cervantes loved his job – he loved getting out and getting exercise. He also spoke of being on the street team supporting recent city endeavors such as CicLAvia and Tour de Fat.

As a Los Angeles driver/cyclist/pedestrian, we see transportation in this city as a broken system with broken leaders and misguided agendas. At least that’s all I seem to read in the blogosphere. Then you come across these seemingly ironic slices of life that surprise you, and reassert your faith in the system.

I am writing this from the perspective of the average apathetic Angeleno with a mild grasp on current laws/measures going in/out. I have more knowledge of the California Vehicle Code (CVCC) than the average driver out there, but I want to look at this experience through the eyes of the average Joe. What does this say to the majority? Can we take what LADOT is doing and use it to our advantage to bring cycling to other city organizations or companies?

Without asking, Officer Cervantes let me know about LADOT’s bicycle plan sponsor Air Quality & Beyond (AQ&B) – and air conditioning and heating company based out of Canoga Park, CA – who puts up the money to purchase the bikes for the city and has been doing so for the last 11 years.

Does anyone know of other “green” companies out there taking similar approaches?

I wish we wouldn’t need a corporate sponsor to advocate cycling over driving in these  types of situations, but ticketing negligent drivers on bikes makes perfect sense to me. Get our citizens healthy and keep our streets clear and air clean. Such a simple task, that not only has health and environmental benefits, but also financial gains.

Here are some pictures of Officer Cervantes at work. One more happy cyclist.