State Uninterested in Public Parking at Caltrans

By Eric Richardson
Published: Wednesday, January 09, 2008, at 06:00PM

Caltrans Building Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The city hopes that as Downtown develops, more people will drive into the neighborhood to check it out. It’s looking to find them more places to park once they get here.

Back in November Councilwoman Jan Perry and Councilman Tom LaBonge passed a motion instructing DOT to contact the state and gauge its interest in opening some of the Caltrans Building’s 1,142 spaces for public parking in the evening and on the weekends. In a response presented by DOT before the Transportation committee, the state offered a limited number of spaces for special events, but cited security concerns in ruling out any public parking.

The ever-quotable LaBonge wasn’t satisfied. “I heard the Governor says there’s a fiscal crisis. I wonder if there’s any money to be made here.” He instructed DOT to re-open the issue, offering to make phone calls himself if needed.



Comments

1
LAofAnaheim writes:

As much as I dislike seeing more parking into downtown, I have no problem if they use existing garages. We don’t want more garages/lots constructed. Of course, my ultimate hope, is that street parking is opened again! Maybe their financial crisis wouldn’t be so bad if we used our streets for urban, pedestrian-friendliness w/ the removal of the “anti-gridlock” zoning.

# on Jan.09.2008 AT 06:22 PM
2
Shawn writes:

I can see security being a concern. They park public vehicles and even marked highway patrol cars in there. It probably just wasn’t designed as a public lot where they can limit access to some of the areas.

# on Jan.09.2008 AT 07:08 PM
3
Scott Mercer writes:

What we really want is more multi-level parking garages constructed, with street-facing retail. I’m talking about at least 5 levels of parking.

And then we need all remaining surface parking lots converted to pocket parks, or at least some of them.

# on Jan.10.2008 AT 02:28 AM
4
LAofAnaheim writes:

Scott…I hope you’re joking. We should promote mass transit into the city. If we build more garages, what’s the benefit for somebody to take transit?

# on Jan.10.2008 AT 09:43 AM
5
Eric Richardson writes:

I think Scott’s simply proposing consolidated structures, instead of needing to have parking next to every building. Less land taken up for parking, more spots for cars, and a way to encourage business as people walk that last block or two to their final destination. We’re not going to get away with simply not parking cars, so we may as well do it right.

# on Jan.10.2008 AT 10:09 AM
6
Justin writes:

Frankly, this will never go anywhere. The State of California, especially Caltrans, are the slowest agencies I have ever dealt with. Also, Caltrans is a bunch of engineers tasked with building streets. Getting them to think out of the box and work out a shared-use parking plan is way too much for them.

# on Jan.10.2008 AT 05:21 PM

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