As a resident of LA, I don't see this actually accomplishing much due to the specific market of downtown LA. Like the article mentions, basically all the new construction in that area comes in at the top of the market. Almost everyone in that socioeconomic class in LA has a car and would want a nearby place to park it. Developers therefore aren't going to build a new luxury high-rise and not provide parking for its residents.
That said, we might as well remove this regulation requiring parking if the market will dictate a similar level of parking anyway. I simply think this type of change would see a greater impact in neighborhoods in which car ownership levels are lower.
> basically all the new construction in that area comes in at the top of the market.
There's a reason for this.
As a result of the fact that new construction is required to have 1-2 parking spots, developers need to put in a lot of parking. And because they need to put in a lot of parking, they need to be expensive. And because they need to be expensive, they might as well be luxury apartments. As a result of all this, all new construction is luxury apartments.
The biggest impact that lifting this requirement will have is that it will increase the amount of affordable housing.
I don't know much about the US housing dynamics but it seems very unlikely that prices will get lower due to less parking being required. It's more likely the builders will profit more.
We went through a similar situation with airplane tickets where I live. The govt agency in charge of aviation and the airlines all wanted the free luggage requirement gone citing cost reductions. They got it, the fares didn't get any cheaper and now you have to pay extra.
I really don't see the 17% reduction in space required for parking being passed onto buyers. People will continue to demand 1-2 parking spots because that's a high cost area and people buying there don't care that much about that discount, if that even happens.
The parent of your post was correct in saying "required", as in legally required for that zoning.
After you subtract the required parking spots, setbacks, sidewalks, driveways then what you're left with is a few super-expensive townhouses in most of LA or the project gets cancelled.
The two markets are not so similar. Air travel can only support a limited number of suppliers (in some locations this number is zero), since commercial airplanes are very expensive and require the use of valuable airport facilities. Housing isn't like that. Lots of investors can afford the note on a small apartment building. If one developer pads her profits, another one will undercut her.
>That said, we might as well remove this regulation requiring parking if the market will dictate a similar level of parking anyway
Part of the reason to enforce parking in new construction is to alleviate the pressure on street parking. Preexisting businesses could be pushed out as new construction draws more people without making parking available.
Providing parking is expensive - perhaps developers will create units that are more affordable if they are not required to spend the extra money to provide parking.
Parking is hardly the driver of unaffordable housing. Requiring “affordable housing” as a condition of building “market housing” is what makes housing expensive — the market units have to be priced very high to cover the loss from the below market units. It’s essentially rent control on new construction.
The value of this is the law currently dictates that parking spaces must be provided on a per unit basis to the person living in the unit. This would often relate to not being able to split out the cost of parking from the cost of the apartment, so for those without a car they'd have to pay more.
The law dictates construction of the parking spaces on a per unit basis, it doesn't require the parking spaces are rented/sold with the specific units. Developers are therefore already able to separate out parking costs from housing costs to a certain extent, but residential parking in LA is cheap compared to other large cities so there is probably still some subsidizing going on.
Removing parking requirements for office and commercial buildings seems like a better end to start in. If you work in the city and live outside, you should be discouraged from driving, and/or be encouraged to drive only to hubs closer to the city and ride in on public transport.
It depends on the goal. If the only goal is to reduce car usage, sure. However, the area already has a problem with housing costs and a rule like this would just cause costs to skyrocket near transit hubs. You need a more robust public transit system for that type of proposal to work without those negative consequences and LA isn't there yet.
I think this is just low cost/effort to reduce a particular problem. DTLA is the most walkable and accessible to public transit place in the city, the only issue is there's nothing there worth walking to besides the Staples Center.
The real area of focus for reducing traffic and vehicle usage should be the San Fernando Valley corridors (Sepulveda/405, the 5, and the 101 to San Gabriel Valley). Iirc from a recent report on KPCC there's like 600k daily commuters between the valley and the southland, and another 700k between the valley and San Gabriel Valley.
We have one metro stop in the SFV, which serves the 3 million residents. It's no wonder it's surrounded by a massive parking lot, and most commuters don't use it anyway.
DTLA is the most walkable and accessible to public transit place in the city, the only issue is there's nothing there worth walking to besides the Staples Center.
And Disney Hall, the Broad, and MOCA on Bunker Hill. Grand Avenue park for events. The Arts District and its many restaurants and breweries. Little Tokyo and the 3 museums there. FiDi's many restaurants. Historic Core and the old Broadway theaters, some still in use. The tens of thousands of new apartments constructed in South Park, Skid West, and Skidrokyo. For architecture nerds, nearly 100 years and a dozen different architectural styles spread out between all of the DTLA districts but especially in FiDi and HC.
We have one metro stop in the SFV, which serves the 3 million residents. It's no wonder it's surrounded by a massive parking lot, and most commuters don't use it anyway.
The sooner the Sepulveda Pass rail/monorail is built, the better.
>The real area of focus for reducing traffic and vehicle usage should be the San Fernando Valley corridors
I totally agree with you on this. Lost of people in this thread are talking about how good/bad transit access in the LA area, but there is no doubt the valley is totally undeserved in that regard.
That said, we might as well remove this regulation requiring parking if the market will dictate a similar level of parking anyway. I simply think this type of change would see a greater impact in neighborhoods in which car ownership levels are lower.