Eyes on the Street: L.A. Ticketing Cars Parked Illegally On Parkways

As of yesterday, the city of Los Angeles has resumed ticketing cars parked in parkways. As many SBLA readers are aware from past coverage, due to a lack of city enforcement for the last few years, parkway parking has become somewhat common in many of L.A.’s population-dense neighborhoods including Koreatown, Westlake, and Westwood.

The “parkway” continues to be a confusing term for many L.A. residents. The term refers to the area between the sidewalk and the curb. The official city of L.A. definition for parkway, clarified recently, is “the area of the public right-of-way not intended for vehicular use between the sidewalk and the curb (or where no curb exists between the sidewalk and the public street), which the City has reserved for landscaping and utilities.”

Parkway parking is generally accessed by cars driving on sidewalks. Driving there endangers pedestrians and damages sidewalks not designed to carry cars.

For a few weeks, LADOT has been leaving warnings on cars parked on parkways. The department also issued a press statement to get the word out in advance of law enforcement starting to issue tickets. Outlets including the L.A. Times and Curbed got the word out in advance of yesterday’s start of ticketing. CBS TV crews were in Koreatown last night covering the “city-wide parking crackdown” and interviewing drivers lamenting the city’s inaction on providing enough free parking for their vehicles.

On a trip through portions of my Koreatown neighborhood this afternoon, there appeared to be fewer illegally-parked cars than there typically have been lately, but still quite a few. Many of these cars had citations on their windshields.