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

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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.

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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 million 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 neighborhoodsrather 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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