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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

#101

Post by mixmastamyk »

jjcm wrote: post #30

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 peopl…

> rather than creating a negative pressure by decreasing parking availability.

Backwards, they are talking about ending a subsidy, not reducing parking directly.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#102

Post by gamblor956 »

throwaway542134 wrote: post #66
mixmastamyk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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 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.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#103

Post by briandear »

obelos wrote: post #68
CalRobert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the fact it's illegal to buy that parking and build housing shows which need is more important evidently.

When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing…

Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “externalities” while public transportation riders pay a subsidized fare. I am not opposed to public transport at all — but when we hear about motorists paying more for their “externalities,” I might argue that public transport users ought to be paying their fair share. Electric car drivers don’t even pay a gas tax but they roll on the same roads as everyone else without actually paying their “fair share.” They even get to clog up the HOV lanes despite rolling with a single person. I am stuck behind some single driver in a Tesla, while I have 5 people in the car while also getting the privilege of subsidizing his use of the road. I also get in traffic jams on roads like El Camino in Palo Alto while buses get to stop and block the road to unload a single person.

It’s fashionable to hate cars, but when I need to get from Mountain View to the Hayward Airport at 4:30am, there is no combination of public transport that would get me there in less than 2 hours. Going from Palo Alto to Livermore on public transport is practically impossible. These European-style high density dreams aren’t based in reality for the majority of the United States. Making San Francisco high density would certainly be great, but applying that model to the rest of the Peninsula is just a pipe dream. 50 floor apartments like Korea would be the only way to make that work, but that still doesn’t account for the reality we have. Saratoga to Milpitas— how does that work with public transportation? The United States is built around cars. That horse has left the barn. You can’t realistically redesign the entirety of America to fit a model that is ideal for Copenhagen. Even in Europe, there are vast searches that are car dependent. Putting a tram or high frequency buses in southern France for instance would be ridiculous outside of Marseille perhaps. Even in the cities: how do you deliver a refrigerator easily within a pedestrian-only city? How about moving trucks? I spent a lot of time in Venice and prices for things are astronomical simply because everything has to be delivered via boat. Venice’s geography makes this unavoidable, but intentionally destroying city logistics because of some fantasy is ridiculous. We can do better, but the anti-car movement doesn’t really understand the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#104

Post by mixmastamyk »

kitotik wrote: post #84
0xffff2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#105

Post by briandear »

hackbinary wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a crazy idea: let the property owner and developer decide the correct amount of parking to provide. And the size of the apartments. And the number of floors to build. The regulations here should be based around things like structural integrity, egress, and safety. Not views, not density, not what size of apartment is “too big” or “too small.” All of those are things the market can sort out.

I am guessing that you are aligned political to the ideological view of the smallest possible government and regulations. Unfortunately, developers and property owners will care nothing for the wider community. Firstly, at what point would you end regulations? Perhaps zoning and planning permission frameworks are too much? Let the market decide. Electrical, again that really is too much regulation, and we should let…

Houston doesn’t have zoning and it seems to work just fine.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#106

Post by briandear »

paggle wrote: post #80
nostromo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a crazy idea: let the property owner and developer decide the correct amount of parking to provide. And the size of the apartments. And the number of floors to build. The regulations here should be based around things like structural integrity, egress, and safety. Not views, not density, not what size of apartment is “too big” or “too small.” All of those are things the market can sort out.

You could do that if you enabled per-minute and per-meter billing for usage of municipal resources like driving on shared roads.

When bus fares are increased to account for the actual cost of the bus system, then let’s talk about metered usage for cars. Bus and train fares are heavily subsidized so those users aren’t paying their fair share either.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#107

Post by chc »

gamblor956 wrote: post #88
chc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#108

Post by mixmastamyk »

gamblor956 wrote: post #102
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 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…

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

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#109

Post by briandear »

mktmkr wrote: post #64
kbenson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

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.

Does Uber carry approved child safety seats?

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#110

Post by briandear »

andys627 wrote: post #49
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…

Providing parking is expensive - perhaps developers will create units that are more affordable if they are not required to spend the extra money to provide parking.

Parking is hardly the driver of unaffordable housing. Requiring “affordable housing” as a condition of building “market housing” is what makes housing expensive — the market units have to be priced very high to cover the loss from the below market units. It’s essentially rent control on new construction.
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