
LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown - DoreenMichele
https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/6/20698162/parking-minimums-downtown-los-angeles
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StringyBob
Where I live (not in the US) we have parking maximums, not minimums.

A new office development will not get planning approval if it has more than 2
parking spaces per 3 employees (based on some obscure measurement of building
capacity). This is to reduce congestion and encourage more environmentally
friendly methods of transportation.

~~~
chc
I feel like this would be putting the cart before the horse in the US. Failing
to put parking in a place with poor walkability and terrible public
transportation doesn't seem like it would encourage much of anything.

~~~
mktmkr
The cars are the reason the buses are slow. 22% of LA workers travel to work
without a car, which isn't great but it's not zero either. Metro LA added a
dedicated bus lane on Flower and they are moving more than one bus per minute
in that lane. As soon as you remove the cars everything else gets a lot
better.

[https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/11538072082299576...](https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1153807208229957632)

~~~
chc
Are they? It's always seemed to me that frequent stops, circuitous routes and
long travel distances are the reason the buses are slow relative to cars.
After all, cars have to deal with other cars as well. And for comparison, to
the south, San Diego has much better traffic than LA, but the buses are still
quite slow (e.g. I recently considered taking the bus rather than a 15-minute
drive in San Diego, but it would have been over an hour by bus).

~~~
gamblor956
You guys are both right. Removing cars from a bus lane makes the buses go
faster.

And having frequent stops makes buses go slower.

Traveling long distances doesn't make the bus any slower; it just limits the
frequency you can revisit a stop on the route without increasing the number of
buses on that route.

~~~
chc
I didn't mean long travel distances make buses go slower, I meant they amplify
the disadvantages of buses, and America tends to have a lot of distance
between things. If a trip would take one minute and it takes four instead,
that's probably fine. If a trip would take 15 minutes and it takes an hour,
that's a bigger problem, even though it's the same relative slowdown.

~~~
bartread
I have exactly that problem:

\- Motorcycle to work: 15 - 20 minutes door to door (driving generally ~30
minutes, but 40 minutes or so during busy periods)

\- Bus to work: > 60 minutes (7 minute walk, 5 minute wait, 45 minute average
bus journey, 7 minute walk)

Cycling would, I reckon, take me about 45 - 50 minutes door to door until I
got fitter, but that would be fine because I'd be getting loads of exercise,
so the trade-off becomes worthwhile even though it takes longer. (The reason I
don't cycle is there's no safe route.)

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andys627
Gov'ts can do 3 things - encourage something, do nothing, or discourage
something. Parking minimums encourage people to drive cars. This is LA taking
a small step towards picking winners (cars...) just little bit less.

~~~
jayd16
You have it backwards. Less than sufficient parking discourages travel to that
area. If you want the area to proper and not simply feel pain, you can't just
discourage cars without an alternative.

If you want people to use public transit, encourage public transit.

~~~
eesmith
The point is to tone down the encouragement to get people to use cars, which
is what the old policy did.

You cannot both encourage people to use cars and encourage people to not use
cars - it's a waste of money.

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slg
As a resident of LA, I don't see this actually accomplishing much due to the
specific market of downtown LA. Like the article mentions, basically all the
new construction in that area comes in at the top of the market. Almost
everyone in that socioeconomic class in LA has a car and would want a nearby
place to park it. Developers therefore aren't going to build a new luxury
high-rise and not provide parking for its residents.

That said, we might as well remove this regulation requiring parking if the
market will dictate a similar level of parking anyway. I simply think this
type of change would see a greater impact in neighborhoods in which car
ownership levels are lower.

~~~
throwaway542134
I think this is just low cost/effort to reduce a particular problem. DTLA is
the most walkable and accessible to public transit place in the city, the only
issue is there's nothing there worth walking to besides the Staples Center.

The real area of focus for reducing traffic and vehicle usage should be the
San Fernando Valley corridors (Sepulveda/405, the 5, and the 101 to San
Gabriel Valley). Iirc from a recent report on KPCC there's like 600k daily
commuters between the valley and the southland, and another 700k between the
valley and San Gabriel Valley.

We have _one_ metro stop in the SFV, which serves the 3 million residents.
It's no wonder it's surrounded by a massive parking lot, and most commuters
don't use it anyway.

~~~
gamblor956
_DTLA is the most walkable and accessible to public transit place in the city,
the only issue is there 's nothing there worth walking to besides the Staples
Center._

And Disney Hall, the Broad, and MOCA on Bunker Hill. Grand Avenue park for
events. The Arts District and its many restaurants and breweries. Little Tokyo
and the 3 museums there. FiDi's many restaurants. Historic Core and the old
Broadway theaters, some still in use. The tens of thousands of new apartments
constructed in South Park, Skid West, and Skidrokyo. For architecture nerds,
nearly 100 years and a dozen different architectural styles spread out between
all of the DTLA districts but especially in FiDi and HC.

 _We have one metro stop in the SFV, which serves the 3 million residents. It
's no wonder it's surrounded by a massive parking lot, and most commuters
don't use it anyway. _

The sooner the Sepulveda Pass rail/monorail is built, the better.

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bahmboo
Lost in this can be the specifics of "parking". Put in lots of 3-5 minute
zones for ride hailing, add 10-15 minute spots for deliveries. Make sure there
are enforced truck parking only for restaurant and business deliveries. Car
share only parking. Scooter and bike parking. etc.

And yes, if I want full time parking for my car I will pay for it. It's not
that expensive if that's my priority.

These are generally the kind of parking configs that most city people would
benefit from.

~~~
mktmkr
1 shared car is shown to replace between 7 and 20 private cars in various
deployments. Building new housing with dedicated car-share parking is a great
way to go.

~~~
kbenson
Housing may be a little harder to accomplish usefully for the people that
would live there for this idea, but business would likely work well. The
problem with housing (if it encompasses a large area and not just small
subsets of the available area) is that some people functionally need a car for
their job or life. Cutting off large amounts of housing from those that
commute or those that need to make semi-regular long trips for other reasons
(maybe picking up children weekly for a custody agreement, or taking care of a
relative that is semi-dependent).

Maybe paid dedicated parking separate from the housing and only allowed to
people that live in the area (with an increase in price for a second car for a
household) would suffice, as long as it was planned well. But that's the
problem, poor planning (or changes over time) could cause problems again.

~~~
mktmkr
Car shares are definitely not for driving to work but I fail to see why you
can't use them to pick up your kids. Car sharing solves the problem where
people can easily journey to work without a car, but they want one for other
purposes like shopping.

~~~
sokoloff
Wouldn’t most residents of the building need the shared car at roughly the
same time to pick up their kids from school?

~~~
mktmkr
No because fewer than 20% of households in Los Angeles have school-age
children. That puts a ceiling on your worst case right there.

~~~
sokoloff
Provided that the housing wasn’t in some way differentially appealing to
families with children (cheap 3BR, good schools, parks nearby, other
amenities)

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clairity
does removing parking minimums actually lower rents by the 17% of rent that's
estimated to go toward parking?

parking podiums eat up the most pedestrian-friendly ground floor square
footage, but i can sympathize with people wanting parking in their building. i
wish all parking would be built underground, but yes, that's even more
expensive.

~~~
rory096
>does removing parking minimums actually lower rents by the 17% of rent that's
estimated to go toward parking?

No, because removing parking minimums is not the same as removing parking.

>parking podiums eat up the most pedestrian-friendly ground floor square
footage, but i can sympathize with people wanting parking in their building.

In-building parking is a widely available amenity amply provided by the
market. Regulatory parking requirements don't change that, they just make it
illegal to _not_ want parking.

~~~
Reelin
> In-building parking is a widely available amenity amply provided by the
> market.

This is an odd claim to make. Regulation has historically _required_ that it
be provided in most (American) markets, hence the ample supply. I'm not sure
how we could possibly know what the market would do on its own over the long
term.

Requiring excessive parking will artificially and needlessly raises prices,
true. But I would also be at least somewhat concerned that without sufficient
regulation short term thinking on the part of builders might result in less
parking than would be generally desirable.

I'm not at all convinced that urban planning should be done by market forces
alone.

~~~
jaredklewis
I don't see anything odd about the claim.

There is no "minimum air conditioning" requirement where I live, but pretty
much every building I walk into has it. My apartment, like most apartments
I've seen, also has it.

Turns out that people don't need the government to tell them what they want.
People like AC, so most buildings have AC. Not particularly remarkable, but
most apartments in my area also come with refrigerators, stoves, ovens, sinks,
showers, and dishwashers, all sans-minimum-appliance requirement.

To me, a minimum parking requirement seems as weirdly dystopian as requiring
ACs or dishwashers. Most people like those things, so most buildings will have
them, but it shouldn't be illegal to decide you don't need an AC or
dishwasher.

~~~
gamblor956
AC/heating are actually required by law in most of the US.

For example, in the Northeast, heaters have been required for all residential
construction for many decades. Residences without heaters are legally
considered not habitable. In most of the Southwest like Arizona and Nevada,
new residential construction must have ACs (in CA, it's not a universal
requirement and window units meet the requirement).

Few residential apartments come with washers. Generally, those would be
apartments classified as "luxury" or better (where luxury is a rental term of
art referring to amenities, not the actual quality of the building...)

~~~
jaredklewis
I didn't know that about other parts of the US. I can see how it might make
sense in Arizona. In California, mandating ACs would be enormously stupid. For
one thing, it would needlessly inhibit use of the many other methods that
exist for cooling buildings (a la Apple Campus). But also, the California
climate is temperate enough that it is very much possible to live without AC.
I have an AC but have not used it in more than a year. I see no reason why we
should require everyone to have one.

I of course have no objection that buildings must be habitable. A building
with dirty water, structural issues, or lacking heat in a cold place is
obviously not serving any market segment.

Parking seems to me be fundamentally different than those issues though. I
know many people that happily live without a car in LA. Why should it be
illegal for developers to cater to them?

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jjcm
It's a good thought, but until public transportation is a 1st party citizen in
LA, this will just cause more problems in the long run. Busses are still seen
as a method of transport for impoverished people, not for the masses. Trains
and light rail simply aren't a priority for either the city nor the
population. For comparison, Sydney is similar to LA in terms of density and
affluence, but has 7.7 times as many people riding their rail transport[1]. LA
should be focusing on creating a positive draw to public transport by
increasing service, availability, and quality, rather than creating a negative
pressure by decreasing parking availability.

[1] 359m annual ridership in Sydney with a 4.6m population, vs 108m annual
ridership in LA with a 10.1m population.

~~~
harmmonica
Your numbers may be apples to apples if that Sydney number is the greater
metro, but just a note that the City of Los Angeles is "only" 4M or so.

~~~
gamblor956
However, the city of LA entirely includes several other cities _within_ its
borders, and the LA Metro area population is roughly 10-12 million...

Also with respect to the rail comparisons, most of LA Metro's ridership is on
the bus system, which absolutely dwarfs Sydney's total public transit
ridership, even after huge drops in ridership.

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pkaye
Is it the case that most people living in the downtown area don't have a car?

~~~
oomkiller
There's quite a bit of capacity available for downtown residents, should they
choose to own a car
[https://www.parkme.com/map#Downtown%20Los%20Angeles%2C%20Los...](https://www.parkme.com/map#Downtown%20Los%20Angeles%2C%20Los%20Angeles%2C%20CA%2C%20USA)

~~~
pkaye
And how are the typical daily parking rates?

~~~
kitotik
Around $30/day or $200/mo.

DTLA is extremely walk/bike/train/bus friendly, most long term residents I
knew did not own cars.

~~~
0xffff2
Do those people never leave downtown? DTLA might be walkable, but the greater
LA area is famously car centric.

~~~
kitotik
DTLA is around 50k population, so like any smallish town, you can do most of
your life there. But like I said, there are train stations that can get you to
most of the greater LA area - Pasadena, Santa Monica, HOLLYWOOD, Long Beach,
Chinatown, etc etc.

~~~
mixmastamyk
And Union Station will get you farther. Rideshare, rentals for the rest.

------
jameslk
I'm not familiar with downtown LA but I haven't heard great things about
public transportation in LA. Are they just trying to encourage less driving
without providing any alternatives?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Downtown has the best transport access in the entire city. There are frequent
trains in every direction and long-distance thru Union Station. While not
Germany-level, it is quite good.

Combined with the rise of rideshare and rentals etc, large parking garages are
becoming obsolete.

~~~
throwaway542134
>Downtown has the best transport access in the entire city

The only problem is that most people don't have a reason to go there. The
streets are usually empty aside from the homeless encampments.

The only reasons I've ever had to go to DTLA was to attend a conference and
some games at the Staples Center. It's a cultural and recreational wasteland
compared to the rest of the city.

~~~
gamblor956
_The streets are usually empty aside from the homeless encampments._

Objectively false. The homeless camps are in Skidrow and near City Hall.

 _It 's a cultural and recreational wasteland compared to the rest of the
city._

There are nearly a dozen museums in DTLA including 2 world-famous art museums,
an opera, 4 operational Broadway-style theaters that are still regularly in
use, around a dozen smaller performance theaters, more than 200 restaurants
including one of the world's busiest/most profitable restaurants, 3 bowling
alleys, 3 karaoke bars, more than a dozen nightclubs, 3 arcades, 3 higher-ed
schools (not including USC, which is technically outside of downtown in its
own neighborhood), more than a dozen parks, around a dozen breweries, 2 large
movie theaters (including one used to premier a number of Hollywood movies),
events every weekend in the summer. Oh, and the food-cart phenomenon got its
start in DTLA at the corner of 9th and Hope, where some of today's most famous
restaurateurs got their start slinging fusion tacos to FIDM students.

If anything, there's too much stuff jammed into DTLA compared to the rest of
the city.

~~~
mixmastamyk
^El Pueblo, Little Tokyo, Fashion/Flower/Jewelry/Finance districts. About as
clueless a post as I've ever seen.

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calvinbhai
This is a win for Uber and Lyft. (wasn't Uber lobbying for this in all big
cities?)

Once it becomes the norm, Uber/Lyft can continue jacking up prices.

~~~
mixmastamyk
It is the private cars that are currently being subsidized. Removing a subsidy
shouldn't result in blaming of the victim.

They have a while to reach profitability and taxi-prices in any case. I won't
blame them when they do.

------
crimsonalucard
The parking requirement makes sense. LA is a city made for cars it's not SF or
NYC.

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exabrial
As always, I have absolute faith the free market with arrive at the correct
answer. It was government regulation that created the issues in the first
place.

------
tempsy
It’s frustrating how few cities in the US are liveable without a car. One of
the best parts of SF is that it’s so small and easy to navigate without a car.

And NYC’s subway system is complete disarray. Not sure what other cities are
manageable without one.

~~~
harmmonica
If you're talking about livable _within_ the city limits (i.e., you don't live
in the suburbs) then I think you'd find locals in Boston, DC and Chicago would
say they can live happily without a car. I think a pretty significant chunk of
folks in Philly, Portland (OR) and Seattle would probably say the same, though
not to the same extent as those other ones. Not disagreeing that there are few
overall, but there are a few beyond NYC and SF.

