Streetsblog Los Angeles

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…

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.” Read more…

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. Read more…

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. Read more…

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. Read more…

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.

Read more…

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? Read more…

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.

A new front in the debate over on-street bike parking opens this week with a motion by Councilmen Bill Rosendahl and Paul Koretz that asks the city to study allowing residents to park in front of their own driveways and garages on the street.  The motion will be debated as part of the City Council Transportation Committee Hearing that begins tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. at City Hall.

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.

Read more…

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.  Read more…