A parking lot in downtown Los Angeles. Image used under Flickr CCLi. Photo by Flickr user Parker Michael Knight.
Los Angeles is famous for its traffic congestion, but rarely do people talk much about the parking nightmares in the city.
Los Angeles Magazine has an article about Donald Shoup, a Yale-trained economist and former chair of UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning, who has made his mission in life to study the “science” of parking and parking lots. The entire article is well worth a read, simply because parking is such an invisible topic, and yet it affects all of us who live in cities big and small.
But here are some factoids I picked up about parking in Los Angeles that I found fascinating:
- Cars spend just 5 percent of their lives in motion.
- There are 39,440 parking meters on the streets of Los Angeles.
- Each meter earns approximately $1000/year.
- Around 2,537,521 citations were handed out to motorists by the city’s parking enforcement bureau last year.
- The most expensive parking ticket (Parking hazardous waste carrier in residential area) is rarely written and costs $378.
- The most common ticket–for parking incorrectly on a street-cleaning day, costs $68.
- Last year fines to drivers totaled $166,700,840.
- Money gathered through fines and tickets was used to pay for parking operations. Surplus revenue is given to the city council.
- L.A. Department of Transportation has five enforcement areas including Central, Southern, Valley, and Western. Of those Hollywood has the highest rate for tickets issued.
- Drivers with expired meters typically get away 90 percent of the time.
See the full article at the Los Angeles Magazine website here.
