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The LA Department of Transportation refused to sign an agreement to communicate with neighborhood councils, aka the stakeholders, a few years ago. Now you end up with situations like this in the NoHo Arts District with its 30 or so theatres and no longer term public parking garage nearby. Via the LA Times
A New Pay & Park Station
The new requirements are part of sweeping parking meter reforms being instituted across L.A. Designed to raise revenue, replace outdated equipment and encourage drivers to use city lots, the changes require motorists in popular entertainment centers to pay $1 an hour until midnight on Friday and Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays. And you can't just feed the meter when your time expires; you must move the car to another space.
"How the hell can anybody do a show?" said Linda Fulton, who owns the Avery Schreiber Theatre with her husband, Richard. "The city invested millions of dollars in this area. It's like now the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing."
So what is the city doing? Now they're looking into it.
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This may be off-location, but the city raised parking rates for Little Tokyo meters to $2.00 per hour. Then a couple weeks ago I noticed that it was $3.00 per hour. Not sure if all the meters had been raised to $3, but damn.
Yeah, you'll see this happen in all popular shopping/entertainment areas. Citywide, the meters are going $1/hour minimum (but it's prorated). I think the highest you'll see is $4/hour in the downtown core and hollywood.
Here's to a new way of live in LA.... or not.
If I'm correct, both areas, Downtown as well as the NoHo Arts District is near public transit hubs. I think this will be an excellent encouragement for theaters as well as businesses to promote public transportation usage.
If people start taking public transit, it will benefit the businesses because people will stroll and look at what is open, look at where to eat afterward, without having to move their cars.
Businesses will see random people come into their stores, who didn't plan on going shopping and buy something.
Businesses will start cleaning up in front of their stores to make them more appealing to pedestrians.
People will feel healthier and be healthier, because they walked. It is good for the digestion and for the mind, so I've heard, to take a walk.
The neighborhood will benefit from taking cars off the street and putting people back on it.
The planet will be thankful as well for moving people efficiently.
It doesn't look like such a bad thing to me to raise the parking meter prices. It only means that we will get out of our comfort zone and reinvent ourselves and our communities and start working and playing together on the streets as opposed to being isolated in our cars.