Los Angeles magazine has a terrific article about "parking guru" Donald Shoup and the history of paid parking in Los Angeles. Shoup says free parking is an urbanity-killer and that appropriately-priced parking keeps cars from having to spew emissions circling the block. Downtown's planned ExpressPark program, which will change parking prices in response to demand, exercises his theories. The LA mag story is chock full of delightful stuff (Shoup says "I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain.") and lots and lots of facts and figures. That's our cue to break down the good stuff, by the numbers:
3: Number of defeated attempts to put in parking meters in LA in the 1940s. Newspaper stories called the meters "immoral" and "a perversion."
400: Number of meters installed in North Hollywood in 1949. This was the first set in LA.
39,440: Number of parking meters in Los Angeles
$1,000: Approximate amount a meter pulls in in a year.
100: Number of parking spaces a million square foot building in New York could be required to have.
1,300: Approximate number of spaces that building would be required to have in LA.
6: Days that one of the first Downtown parking lot operators had to wait for his first customer in the 1910s.
83: Number of addresses wiped out by that parking lot operator in pursuit of new parking.
40: Number of parking lots in Downtown by 1920.
More than 100: Number of parking lots in Downtown by 1926.
2,188: Number of parking spaces built below Disney Hall.
$110 million: Cost of Disney Hall's underground garage.
$9: Price parkers pay at Disney Hall.
128: Minimum number of shows Disney Hall must hold each year in order to cover the price of the garage and make up for the cheap parking rate.
2,537,521: Number of citations issued by parking enforcement last year.
$166,700,840: Total price of fines issued last year.
28: Percent of citations that went unpaid last year, according to an audit by the city controller.
$378: Amount of the most expensive ticket issued in LA. It's for "parking hazardous waste carrier in residential area."
$68: Amount of most common ticket, for parking in a street cleaning zone.
124: Number of tickets earned by a guy who lives on Thirty-Sixth Street--the most of any person in LA. They total $13,028.
17: Percent of the time that John Van Horn, editor of Parking Today magazine, was issued a ticket for parking in a permit zone near the Grove, which he did once a month for a year.
4: Percent of the time Van Horn was ticketed for parking at an unpaid meter in Beverly Hills, which he did once a week for a year.
2.5: Number of times Shoup found that an average driver had to circle the block in Westwood Village before finding meter parking.
1: Number of cars Shoup says need to be moved off of a block "for the system to work and get rid of all cruising [around the block for a space]."
· Between the Lines [Los Angeles]
· Most Popular Downtown Parking Spots Could Get Very Pricey Soon [Curbed LA]
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