14 percent of los angeles county land is dedicated to parking - where to park it - curbed la

7/23/2019 14 Percent of Los Angeles County Land is Dedicated to Parking - Where to Park It - Curbed LA

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Monday, November 30, 2015, by Jeff Wattenhofer

Image via Journal of the American Planning Association

When Andrew Pansini opened Los Angeles's first parking lot back in 1917, he

couldn't have known he was setting into motion a Los Angeles love affair with

easy parking. It was six days before <http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/01

/las_parking_past_and_present_by_the_numbers.php> a single car pulled in to

Pansini's lot, but it didn't take long after that for Angelenos to catch on to the

luxury of abundant parking options. From the humble beginnings of that first lot

on the corner of Fourth and Olive, the LA parking craze was born, with more

than 100 parking lots springing up in just six years. Over the next century,

off-street parking became about as ubiquitous in LA as palm trees, limiting

density and helping to stretch the city to lengths that could no longer be tamed

by public transit alone. The car was king. Now, as the city begins to reevaluate

its transportation systems <http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/08

/los_angeles_mobility_plan_2035.php> to encourage more travel by buses,trains, and bikes, a new study reveals exactly how much space LA has

surrendered to parking over the past 100 years. According to a report

<http://www.transportationlca.org/losangelesparking/> published in the Journal

of the American Planning Association (via The Source

<http://thesource.metro.net/2015/11/30/how-we-roll-nov-30-how-much-parking-

in-our-region-is-too-much/> ), a staggering 14 percent of LA County's

incorporated land is devoted to parking.

rcent of Los Angeles County Land is Dedicated to Parking - Where ... http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/11/how_much_parking_los_an

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Total Parking Spaces in Los Angeles 1950 to 2010

Non-Residential Off-Street Parking Spaces in Los Angeles 1950 to 2010


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Residential Off-Street Parking Spaces in Los Angeles 1950 to 2010

The report's authors say that more space in LA is devoted to parked cars

than driven cars; they estimate parking infrastructure takes up about 200

square miles of land in LA county, which is 1.4 times greater than the 140 square

miles of land taken up by streets and freeways. The report estimates the number

of actual parking spaces in Los Angeles at around 18.6 millio n in 2010, made

up of 5.5 million residential off-street spots, 9.6 million non-residential off-street

spots, and 3.6 million on-street parking spots. That 18.6 million total parking

spots amounts to an average 3.3 parking spaces for each one of the 5.6 million

cars in the county that year.

Many urban planners think abundant parking goes hand in hand with LA's

perpetual traffic woes, pollution, and lack of density. The perception that there

will always be available parking leads drivers to neglect public transportation

options, contributing to traffic, as well as to the increase in pollution caused by

circling the block in search of a spot. Additionally, zoning codes obligate real

estate developers to build a certain number of spaces with every project, which

is often offered to drivers for free or at well below market value, further

encouraging people to drive.

"You can't have the number of cars we have in L.A. without our parking lots, and

you can never create urban density with the parking lots we've built," famed LA

"parking guru" Donald Shoup told Los Angeles magazine

<http://www.lamag.com/longform/between-the-lines/> back in 2011. Shoup,

former chair of UCLA's Department of Urban Planning, believes there is some

use for the 200 square miles of parking space LA is stuck with, but only if the the

city radically rethinks the way it parks. Shoup is a proponent of the

demand-based pricing structure that is already being used in a couple of

notoriously congested LA neighborhoods—rather than arbitrarily pricing spaces,

parking prices fluctuate based on how many people want to park. Updated

parking meters can also track available parking spaces and broadcast that

information to a parking app, eliminating the need for circling in search of an

open space. In Downtown LA alone, LADOT's ExpressPark

<http://la.curbed.com/tags/expresspark> program has improved parking

occupancy and increased revenues 2.5 percent. With Westwood getting demand


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based parking earlier this year and Hollywood following suit in the near future,

LA is at least taking one small step to ease its easy parking addiction.


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· Growth of Parking Infrastructure in Los Angeles

<http://www.transportationlca.org/losangelesparking/> [Transportation LCA]

· How We Roll, Nov. 30: how much parking in our region is too much?

<http://thesource.metro.net/2015/11/30/how-we-roll-nov-30-how-much-parking-in-our-region-is-too-much/> [The Source]

· LA's Pricey Parking Past and Present, By the Numbers <http://la.curbed.com

/archives/2012/01/las_parking_past_and_present_by_the_numbers.php>

[Curbed LA]

· Experimental Downtown Parking Program Lowering Rates, Filling Spaces,

Spreading to Westwood <http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/08

/experimental_downtown_parking_program_lowering_rates_raising_occupancy_

spreading_to_westwood.php> [Curbed LA]


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14 percent of los angeles county land is dedicated to parking - where to park it - curbed la

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