Los Angeles Parking To Cost More in 2009
The cost of an hour going from 25 cents to as much as $4 citywide
TJ Sullivan
Free parking after 6 p.m. is going away in LA. Many meters will require feeding until 8 p.m. Some will go later.
Only a couple weeks remain to say goodbye to your 25-cents-an-hour parking meter in Los Angeles. By the end of January, the city expects to be done adjusting the cost of all street parking no less than $1, and as much as $4, for every 60 minutes.
The Daily News says the city predicts the change will net an increase of $18 million in revenue, though it's unclear how much, if any, of that will come in the form of parking ticket revenue.
Some drivers may have already noticed the increases as meter adjustments have been ongoing. The city expects to have the project completed in January.
And pay attention to those signs. That whole free-after-six thing is going away. Many meters citywide will remain active until 8 p.m., giving parking enforcement officers another couple hours to write tickets.
As you've surely seen before, little things like parking-sign changes are easy to miss.
Of the 40,000 meters being adjusted, about 6,000 are being replaced altogether with new units capable of reading credit and debit cards.
A piece in the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this month quoted urban planner and parking expert Don Shoup of UCLA talking about how higher parking costs can promote carpooling.
According to Shoup, commuters who park free at work in Los Angeles tend to drive alone 70 percent of the time, with about 15 percent using public transportation. Once fees for parking are added to the scenario, however, a five-dollar-a-day fee more than doubles the number of people using public transit, and drops the single-occupancy-vehicle use down to 45 percent.
