Los Angeles transportation officials plan to launch a new pricing system for Westwood’s parking meters in the coming months, allowing meters to change their prices depending on the time of day.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation project aims to improve parking availability and distribution as well as decrease traffic congestion, according to a meeting Wednesday by the Westwood Village Improvement Association Parking, Access and Transportation Committee.
As part of the project called ExpressPark, LADOT installed smart meters in downtown Los Angeles several years ago and is now looking to Westwood, Hollywood, Exposition Park and Venice to expand the program because the areas have congested roads, said Peer Ghent, a LADOT senior management analyst.
Ghent said he first submitted an application for the Westwood project in September 2011. The federal grant for the Westwood project is $600,000, and LADOT plans to spend an additional $150,000 to support it, Ghent said.
The department does not intend to raise money with this project, but when ExpressPark opened in downtown Los Angeles, revenue went up by 2.5 percent, he said.
ExpressPark has led more people to start parking in low-density areas, he added.
In the downtown project, LADOT set different rates for three separate time intervals during the day, with the rates being highest from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The evening prices vary, and officials also created late enforcement hours after 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Parking in those spots is limited to two hours.
Once officials set prices in Westwood, people who park in the area will be able to find prices through a new parking guide system, which will include a website and mobile apps like ParkMe.
Westwood Community Council Chair Steve Sann said at the meeting that he thinks LADOT should also extend the time limit of parking meters to significantly longer than two hours in the evening for visitors who want to go to dinner and a movie. He said he thinks local employers should be given ample notice of the changes and of alternative parking areas because ground sensors in the ExpressPark system will make it difficult for workers to park and renew time at meters throughout their shifts.
Ghent said the Parking, Access and Transportation Committee met with UCLA representatives, the real estate manager for downtown UCLA properties and the manager of the Westwood Trader Joe’s to discuss parking concerns.
All parties said they favored parking meters that charge a flat rate of $5 for after-hours parking, Ghent added.
The committee is also currently trying to get approval to install three wayfinding signs for parking guidance on the intersections of Weyburn Avenue and Westwood Boulevard, Weyburn Avenue and Broxton Avenue and Westwood Boulevard and Glendon Avenue, but there is no date set for the approval yet.
Rhonda Smith, 43, who parks frequently in Westwood, said she agrees with the parking implementation ideas because it can be a hassle to try to find spaces and keep within time limits while running errands.
“The way-directing signs sound good. Most people only use their credit card for museum parking, so it sounds really convenient,” Smith said.
Elsa Del Campo, a graduate student in Chicana/o studies, said she thinks the ExpressPark program and the other considerations for improving traffic and parking in Westwood are good ideas. She said when her friend drives her to Westwood, her friend often worries about running out of time at parking meters.
LADOT is now replacing meter parking stations in Westwood with ones that accept both cash and credit cards.
This is a great idea. I hope LADOT will commit to using any additional revenue generated to improve sidewalks, etc., in the neighborhood.
Not sure raising prices does anything to relieve congestion. Oh look there’s a parking spot! It costs more so what? Doesn’t change the fact that I need a spot. We need more parking spots and/or parking stackers (10 cars high, yes we have the technology now) Venice NC found 30 new parking spaces last month. Didn’t raise prices or change anything. They just created/designated 30 new parking spaces and continue to look for creative solutions that don’t have negative impacts on taxpayers wallets. Busy restaurants and businesses are using stackers and other solutions to fill the need for more parking. Adding more to the price of a spot only punishes the poor while doing nothing to increase parking capacity. Steve does so much good work for Westwood and I can’t say enough about what a great guy he is but on this issue I think there might be a less financially impactful solution in the cards.
This is nonsense. The problem is population density. There are too many people being attracted to a very small area and there are not enough parking spots for all of them. The extreme parking problem highlights what LA has known for a century. The 1915 Study of Traffic in Los Angeles said that subways and above ground fixed rail systems could not function in a circular geographic area like LA (which is over 5,000 sq miles). Thus, they advised not to build high density areas, e.g. DTLA, Westwood, Holluywood since 2001, The Westside, Century City. There is no way mass transit can service areas such as Westwood which leaves cars as the only feasible mode of transportation.
In a particularly stupid decision, the City thought that they could force people to use mass transit by restricting parking in dense areas, e.g. Hollywood, Westwood. It was a total failure. In Hollywood so many people simply moved away. Council district 13 for the center of Hollywood drove away so many people, that CD 13 ceased to qualify as a council district. Killing itself by “Smart Planning” is the definition of disaster. In 206, Gail Goldberg the director planning warned of the coming disaster, but the city fired her. Firing Goldberg did not stop the disaster.
Every place LA has encourage super density has turned into a disaster. The City myopically lavished so much money on these financially disastrous projects, that it failed to maintain its infrastructure and now LA is crumbling. Its roads are the worse in the nation, we have water mains burst almost everyday, we have so few paramedics that the County Grand Jury found that people are needlessly dying, the LAPD is under funded and over stressed, LA is the most park deficient major city, the City failed to make adequate annual contributions to our pensions for so many years that we now face a $10 BILLION future deficit.
As a result of our deterioration and the refusal of the city to take it seriously, businesses stay away from LA. Who wants to move to a city without adequate infrastructure, where the crime rate is so high that the police department publishes false data to conceal the problem, where the middle class is leaving? In Hollywood, which has been particularly devastated by the myopic pushes for super density, the new dorm room type mixed-use projects are often occupied by unrelated Millennials or by subsidized seniors. The population is shifting into a dumbbell format with lots of transient Millennials and a lot of elderly but with a shrinking productive middle and lower middle class.
Futzing around with parking meters is a delusional approach to a horrific nightmare which “Smart Planning” and vast corruption have brought to Los Angeles.