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LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

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Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#81

Post by [deleted] »

mktmkr wrote: post #34
VBprogrammer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, in London new housing has been built with the explicit planning condition that residents aren't entitled to on street parking and no parking is included in the development.

In SF as well, but the local government has shown itself unable to resist calls to later add parking entitlements to structures after they are built. For example all "live-work" developments are forbidden by law from participating in residential parking permit zones, but the city council has repeatedly established RPP zones on blocks where the sole residential buildings are all live-work.

[deleted]

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#82

Post by slg »

zjaffee wrote: post #58
slg wrote: post #33

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 r…

The value of this is the law currently dictates that parking spaces must be provided on a per unit basis to the person living in the unit. This would often relate to not being able to split out the cost of parking from the cost of the apartment, so for those without a car they'd have to pay more.

The law dictates construction of the parking spaces on a per unit basis, it doesn't require the parking spaces are rented/sold with the specific units. Developers are therefore already able to separate out parking costs from housing costs to a certain extent, but residential parking in LA is cheap compared to other large cities so there is probably still some subsidizing going on.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#83

Post by clairity »

mktmkr wrote: post #54
jaredklewis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't the savings/costs be passed along to the consumer as in every other segment of the market? If I am a strawberry seller and my cost to buy strawberries goes down, I can pass those savings onto the consumer or not. But my competitors will all be making the same choice, so absent collusion, if I don't lower my prices, but my competitors do, then obviously they'll take my business. In other words, profit mar…

I think you are overstating the case that the market will pass this saving through. In reality there is some market-clearing price for a dwelling without a parking space and there's nothing the developer can do to influence it. This is the same reason that it's actually not possible to "build affordable housing" as many people demand. Yes you can build the housing but there's nothing you can do about the price it the…

right, my skepticism was about the actual market dynamics and the forces that might compel pass-through savings via competition, not the econ 101 idealization of commodity markets.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#84

Post by kitotik »

0xffff2 wrote: post #18
kitotik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around $30/day or $200/mo. DTLA is extremely walk/bike/train/bus friendly, most long term residents I knew did not own cars.

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

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.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#85

Post by slg »

throwaway542134 wrote: post #65
slg wrote: post #33

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 r…

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 repo…

>The real area of focus for reducing traffic and vehicle usage should be the San Fernando Valley corridors

I totally agree with you on this. Lost of people in this thread are talking about how good/bad transit access in the LA area, but there is no doubt the valley is totally undeserved in that regard.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#86

Post by rtkwe »

chc wrote: post #17
StringyBob wrote: post #10

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.

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.

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. As long as there's requirements to provide loads of parking space there's not going to be much pressure for proper walkable and public transit accessible locations and without locations being built around these ideas there's not pressure to make them accessible by non-car traffic.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#87

Post by slg »

alkonaut wrote: post #42
slg wrote: post #33

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 r…

Removing parking requirements for office and commercial buildings seems like a better end to start in. If you work in the city and live outside, you should be discouraged from driving, and/or be encouraged to drive only to hubs closer to the city and ride in on public transport.

It depends on the goal. If the only goal is to reduce car usage, sure. However, the area already has a problem with housing costs and a rule like this would just cause costs to skyrocket near transit hubs. You need a more robust public transit system for that type of proposal to work without those negative consequences and LA isn't there yet.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#88

Post by gamblor956 »

chc wrote: post #55
mktmkr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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 ha…

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.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#89

Post by mixmastamyk »

jayd16 wrote: post #69
throwaway542134 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>The only problem is that most people don't have a reason to go there. This is out of date. There's a lot more to do downtown these days.

Indeed, that response is seemingly from twenty years ago. 90% of LA history is in downtown also. What downtown looks like today:

https://urbanize.la/post/perla-condo-tower-tops-out-4th-broa...

Still, skid row is as bad as it ever was.

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