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We promise that not every installment of the A&E Report will focus on parking, but there's a reason the first two installments do: parking in this city sucks — big time. It's a curse that affects us all, and most of us just suck it up and suffer through it. But the arrogant and entitled don't play by the rules, and they've made parking more of a nightmare than it needs to be.
Compact spaces were intended to help alleviate the parking problem. They allowed garages to cram in more spaces and at the same time reward people for buying cars that didn't take up so much damn space. The problem is that almost no one pays attention to them. For most people, any open space is as good as the next one, and if they have to squeeze their Suburban into a compact space, so be it. Nevermind that this makes it impossible for anyone to fit into the adjacent spaces, or that their gas-guzzling behemoths are so close to the car next to them that the driver isn't going to be able to get his door open. How many times have you witnessed the old A&E squeeze, where a compact space is left empty because two SUVs that are parked on either side of it created an opening so tight not even a Mini Cooper could fit there? In a crowded lot, the abuse of compact spaces can even seem to cause a net loss in available parking. You can thank arrogance and entitlement for that.
Part of the blame, though, has to go to poor planning. Compact spaces were an experiment that failed, and it failed because whoever thought up the idea underestimated the amount of A&E in LA drivers. Yet new garages are still permitted to section off up to 40% of their parking for compact spaces. In a city where SUVs are so plentiful and civility is so rare, that's a fool's ratio. And if you're going to create so many compact parking spaces in your lot, you should be responsible for punishing the offenders, though ticketing and towing for compact space abuses are extremely rare.
Perhaps we need a new type of parking ticket, one that addresses the parking offenses that really make our lives difficult and that puts the A&E drivers on notice that we aren't going to take their behavior silently anymore. LAist therefore presents a suggestion for just such a ticket. Click on the illustration to enlarge. And the next time you see a Range Rover hogging a compact space, imagine a world where a ticket like this really was legally binding, and where the steep fine it carried could be put toward a fund to redraw the parking lines and eliminate all compact spaces once and for all.
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BEAUTY!
And it shall go into use immediately.
Perhaps you need to acknowledge that this idea came from your highly intelligent readership :)
Sorry, Ted. You get full credit for the parking ticket idea. Thanks!
Brilliant! Kudos and huzzah!
I drive a large car and often find myself HAVING to park in compact parking. While I'd never park in a compact spot so small that neither of my neighbors could access their cars, parking in larger compact spots is a necessity at times.
I highly doubt the creators of the lots had Good Samaritan acts in mind when they made so many compact spots. The more spots, the more $1 or $4 they rake in. The ratio is way too high especially when you have compact cars parking in both compact and full sized spaces.
You are part of the problem, Chrissy.
Give me a solution, carkeyer. I live in Koreatown and I deal with parking problems every day. Los Angeles seems more excited about finding new ways to ticket residents than they do about finding a solution to this problem. I considered getting a Mini Cooper but its not a financially sound decision right now. Hell, I've considered moving to DC because the public transportation system there is amazing. I pay over $1000/mo for car notes, insurance, parking tickets and gas. I'd love to save that and have a convenient and easy way to get around the city. Unfortunately, that is not an option and having such a f'ed compact parking ratio is far from a real solution.
YEA!!!!!!!!!!!
While I'm not volunteering to pay more for parking, the fact is that we actually pay too *little* for parking in LA. Mostly free parking with shelling out 2 bucks here and there, and coughing up more for the occasional valet do not at all begin to cover the REAL costs of parking. (Check out this article to get a better idea of what I’m talking about. http://www.vtpi.org/shoup.pdf)
Patterns of human behavior sadly preclude finding a panacea to the parking problem. This is particularly true in auto-centered areas, where incentives to encourage public transit use and/or carpooling more often fail than succeed. Weaning people off their private cars is a serious uphill battle, even if there are plenty of reasons to change our habits. We do all sorts of things in our own self-interest that result in irrational outcomes, like drive at rush hour and park at the Grove during the weekend. But it's never you who's part of the problem, right? Do you try to travel on the 10 during off-peak times so that you're not contributing to traffic that other people sit in? No, you’re complaining about the a-holes and even polite drivers who are on the freeway at the same time, making life hell during your commute.
It's also a question of urban design and the quality of our built environment. We can bitch about the lack of easy parking all we want, but what's the alternative? Lay asphalt for more surface parking lots that gobble up open land and build additional hideous stacked parking structures? LA is already enough of a visual mess because of the abundance of parking.
Clearly I don't have an answer to this problem. I do, however, fully support being polite and parking responsibly under our shared circumstances, and am like everyone else routinely pissed off at the flouting of motorist etiquette. I plan to keep a stash of The A&E Parking Ticket handy in my glove compartment and eagerly await the first opportunity to bust it out. But to wish that additional parking will magically appear doesn't take the broader impacts into consideration.
Here at my building in Beverly Hills Standard parking the company the handles the parking situation here as just begun to cite SUV's for parking in compact spaces.
Not sure if Standard Parking is doing this all over the city, but its a good start.
This is the most BRILLIANT thing I've seen in ages!
It would apply to DC drivers as well...
Just jumped over to say, HEAR, HEAR... ticket the hell out of oversized vehicles in compact spaces.
You drive an effing SUV or trunk in an effing city, you get what you asked for if you can't find a space.