LA Valets Stealing Street Parking

This report from NBC4's Ana Garcia ought to sound familiar to anyone who's tried to park anywhere near a club or restaurant in LA after 6 p.m.

Previous posts about parking in LA at this link.

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— TJ Sullivan in LA

LA Today: A Photo of a New Parking Sign

— Photo by TJ Sullivan —

The longer hours of metered parking enforcement are here. Get used to it. This shiny new sign is on Santa Monica Boulevard on the Westside.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Is This More Parking Skulduggery?*

— Photo by TJ Sullivan —

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* I talked about this issue on KCRW's 'Which Way, LA? with host Warren Olney and Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA.

DOWNLOAD LINK and a related post by Zach Behrens at LAist.

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Los Angeles parking-meter fees are likely to remain a contentious issue for awhile now, especially considering the City Council's decision Tuesday to request a study that will take three months to prepare, though that may be just long enough for something else to come along and distract us before any changes result.

Although a good argument can be made about the beneficial deterrent effects of higher-priced curbside parking — specifically the increased motivation for commuters to carpool — that wasn't the reason the city hiked the fees last year. Rather, the fee hike provided a source of much-needed revenue, and that's a much bigger problem that isn't about to go away.

No one who expects to be taken seriously in this discussion would be so foolish as to suggest parking ought to be free. And, maybe 25 cents was too little to charge per hour in any part of the city. But taking rates as high as $4 an hour in some areas, in addition to increasing the hours of operation in both the morning and evening, is definitely too much too fast.

Many drivers and business owners have already complained, and more are certain to do the same in the coming weeks.

At some point, we're going to have to ask whether this is parking skulduggery because, once the dollars start to flow into city coffers, the meter-revenue claim is sure to smack of bureaucratic doublespeak. As the source of the increased revenue is revealed we'll see that they really meant "meter-maid revenue." We can already guess from whence a lot of this money will come, not in quarters from the meters, but rather from the checks we'll all write to pay the parking citations we'll find tucked beneath the windshield wipers on our cars. And that doesn't seem fair, or just.

Many drivers won't notice that the meter fees have changed. Nor will it register that the hours of operation stated on the sign have been altered. They'll pump that quarter into the meter like always expecting to get an hour in return, or they'll park thinking the space is free after 6 p.m., like it's always been ... until now ... and the cost of that education will be the fine stated on the ticket.

Who parks at the meters? It's not the Lincoln Town Cars with chauffeurs at the wheel. It's the rest of us.

It's part-time students at UCLA who are taking just one class and can't afford a parking pass. It's people using the Central Library downtown, where the parking garage used to be reasonably priced, but now can cost as much as $9 for three hours, and another $4 for every 10 minutes after that, up to $36.50!

It would be one thing if LA had the public transportation system of San Francisco, or New York, but we don't. For some trips, the bus makes sense, but for most of us, it's just not practical. We have to drive to get where we need to go in the time that we have to get there.

For the City Council to now be asking for a study about all of this is completely backwards, and, because it was the council who approved this in the first place, I can't help but assume that the study is merely a way to buy some time, to allow things to cool, because for a matter such as this, three months is longer than the limits of the public attention span.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

* Cross posted at LA Observed

Council Questions Parking Meter Changes

— Photo By TJ Sullivan —

The flap over the abolition of free-after-6 parking, and the extinction of the 25-cent-per-hour meter in Los Angeles has so concerned city officials that they've asked for ... a report.

After scads of complaints from places like North Hollywood, where theatergoers can't even enjoy a show without ducking out to feed the meter (technically they're supposed to move their car after whatever time limit is stated on the sign), the Los Angeles City Council today asked for a parking meter report.

Yes, the whole price-increase thing was kinda sorta the council's call when it approved this year's budget, but, uh, well, um ...

Forget that any LA driver could have predicted the public's resistance. In fact, Don Shoup, an urban planner at UCLA, explained last month that the aversion drivers have toward paying for parking might encourage more people to carpool, a silver lining that's directly tied to the silver lining our pockets.

Nonetheless, the city's Department of Transportation appears to have been caught off guard. Amir Sedadi, assistant GM of the city DOT, apologized to the council today and said his department would report back in three months with an analysis about how the new meters affect businesses.

If you listen closely you might still be able to hear merchants in places like Westwood Village and North Hollywood screaming "THREE MONTHS!"

In the meantime, it would appear that the city isn't going to forgive all those parking tickets that are sure to paper the windshields of countless drivers who surely won't bother to check signs for new hours of enforcement because they expect the hours to be same as they've always been. They'll assume that the meter maids lay off at 6 p.m., or that they don't start until 10 a.m., or whatever the case may be.

Where else did you think that $11 million in projected revenue was going to come from? The meters?

Even if drivers glance at the updated signs, many probably won't notice the change. Remember those nine-minute meters in Santa Monica?

— TJ Sullivan in LA


Other Parking Related Posts:

My $36.50 Parking Education

Fighting Signs with Signs

The End of Free-After-6 Parking in LA

— Photo by TJ Sullivan —

It didn't take long for the City of Los Angeles to start instituting those higher parking-meter fees and longer hours of operation.

I snapped this shot of one of the new signs with my cell phone camera on Thursday in Westwood Village [see inset], where metered parking used to be free daily until 10 a.m.

Not that any municipality would intentionally try to make parking ridiculously complicated, but ... it might take a minute or two to decipher what the new terms mean, and to figure how not to get ticketed.


— TJ Sullivan in LA

* Cross posted at LA Observed.

The End of 25-Cent Parking in LA

— Photo by TJ Sullivan —

The City of Los Angeles is in the process of making you pay more at the curb.

And, in case you haven't noticed, you're already paying more at The Los Angeles Public Library.

The old fee structure that allowed visitors to the central library downtown to pay a mere $6.50 for three hours of parking during library use has been increased to a charge of $9. The maximum rate is still $36.50 a day, which adds up quite quickly after the third hour so don't dawdle in the stacks.

As for those meters, the city plans to reset those that charge 25-cents-an-hour to return no more than 15 minutes per quarter. The most expensive city meters will top out at $4 per hour.

Of course, this does not affect non-city meters. You could pay more or less in other municipalities such as West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, or Santa Monica.

Earlier this month, I noticed that the city meters outside my Westside post office ceased to provide an hour for 50 cents, so it seems some have already gone through the change. Makes me wonder how many people will end up paying a parking ticket in the next few weeks for failing to look at the minutes provided per quarter.

Some of the new meters are supposed take credit cards, though I haven't seen any of those yet.

Perhaps the bigger issue for curb-side parkers will be the end of free-after-6 p.m. parking. Come 2009, LA parking meters won't go dark until 8 p.m., at least. Some meters will go later, so check those signs.

Remember the lesson of the 9-minute meter.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

LAO: Fighting Signs with Signs

My latest post from LA Observed's Native Intelligence:

No stopping …
No Parking …
Loading Only …
Street Cleaning …
Permits Exempt …
Sundays and Holidays Exempt …
Anti-Gridlock Zone …

Los Angelenos learn the meaning of these terms the way most people acquire knowledge, by paying tuition, albeit in the form of parking citations and fines. Those who say we in LA don't read have obviously never parallel parked on our streets, where we not only read, but debate the subtext and hidden meanings intended by the author. Is "stopping" the same as parking, or something permanent? Is "Flag Day" a holiday? What exactly qualifies as "loading?" And, can Hondas park wherever in Beverly HIlls, or is that particular privilege afforded only to late-model Jaguars and UPS vans?

Confusing as it can be, there's now one more lesson -- a sign that regulates unregulated signage -- the course materials for which have been posted at various locations throughout the city, most recently along Olympic Boulevard on the Westside ...

Read the rest at LA Observed's Native Intelligence

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA

Returning To The Scene Of The ‘9’

A solution to the parking meter mystery is up at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Nine Minutes

The devil is in the details. It's an axiom that's called to mind by many Los Angelenos as they endeavor to interpret parking signs after receiving a ticket.

Fume as we may about parking officers who swoop and cite our vehicles within the minute the meter expires, most of us have always understood the bit about the details.

As burned as we may feel by the sting of a citation, few would suggest that they were duped by some sort of intentional visual trickery. The mere notion that a parking department would engage in skulduggery seems lunatic. Read the sign. Follow the rules. It's simple.

That's why I'm sure there's a good explanation for why a string of "9 hour parking" meters in the 1100 block of Colorado Ave in Santa Monica is blended with a couple "9 minute parking" meters (see photo inset). Surely "9 minute parking" meters exist other places, not just next to "9 hour parking" meters. Don't they?

The 9-minute duration is odd. Why not 10, or 15 minutes? How about 8 minutes? And, while we're at it, why does the "9 minute parking" meter allow the purchase of far more time than permitted by the nine-minute limit?

In the spirit of search-engine dominated Santa Monica (both Yahoo and Google have offices there), I tried to find some answers online.

I conducted a simple Google search of "15 minute parking" and it yielded more than 28,000 hits. There were 7,900 at Yahoo. The phrase "10 minute parking" returned about 850 on Google and nearly 13,000 on Yahoo. But, "9 minute parking" failed to return a single document from either Google, or Yahoo. Nothing.

Of course, such statistics are meaningless because the sign still says what it says. But I just can't figure any other way to make the point without sounding like, well, a yahoo.

Cross posted at LA Observed.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

My $36.50 Parking Education

I've been doing a lot of research this month at the Central Library downtown, and thought I'd figured out the parking situation.

And then came the $36.50 bill.

I'd spent more than four and a half hours in the stacks, and so, of course, I should have been punished. But $36.50?

This might be a hint as to why it seems few people use the library downtown.

— TJ Sullivan in LA