Parking

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.