Streetsblog Los Angeles

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. Read more…

It’s almost like the City Council Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUM) was celebrating Park(ing) Day a little early.

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.” Read more…

(Last week we had a chance to talk with UCLA Professor and renowned Parking Rock Star Donald Shoup about Los Angeles’ ExpressPark system coming to the Downtown soon.  The transcript was edited slightly by both of us for clarity. For more information about ExpressPark and the city’s plans, visit Blog Downtown. – DN)

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?

This Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee will consider an ordinance that would create a permitting system that would allow people to park in front of the driveways of the dwelling they lease or own.  The California Vehicle Code (CVC) allows municipalities to create such a program, but none of the other major cities in California have yet to try such a program.

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. Read more…

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. Read more…

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.  Read more…

Last Thursday, Los Angeles Comptroller Wendy Greuel released the findings of an audit of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s parking program to address shortcomings in revenue collection.  Greuel’s report identified a couple of areas that needed addressing to maximize revenue, but the item that caught the media’s attention was the so-called “Gold Card Desk” (GCD) where City Council Members could “fix” parking tickets brought to their attention by constituents with a simple phone call.

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. Read more…

Like a once-vanquished zombie rising from its grave in a poorly conceived sequel, the city is reportedly considering  a series of plans that would hand over control and profit for nine city-owned parking garages to a private entity.  Last January, the City Council rejected a proposal by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to begin soliciting bids for the city’s lots, but apparently that didn’t stop some organizations from soliciting bids anyways.  City Watch reports that City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana has received several “unsolicited” offers to manage or lease the 8,200 parking spaces located in nine garages.  Jack Humperville reports:

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. Read more…

Earlier today, A.B. 710, the Infill Development and Sustainable Community Act of 2011, sailed through a hearing of the California State Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development. If adopted, A.B. 710 would drop minimum parking requirements for infill development in “transit intensive areas” down to one car per residential unit or per 1,000 square feet of retail space.  Infill development is any new project that is built on a currently unoccupied space.

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.” Read more…