It just got a little bit easier to find a parking spot in clogged Westwood Village: yesterday, the LA Department of Transportation expanded its LA Express Park program into the neighborhood, creating demand-based pricing for street parking. A rep for ParkMe, the third-party website and app that tells drivers where to find spots and how much they cost, tells Curbed that the upgrades will affect 500 parking spaces in the Village, and that there will be a two-hour parking limit, just like with the Express Park spaces in Downtown LA.
The program puts sensors in all the participating parking spots that will know whether the spot is occupied or vacant. That information will be available to drivers via the app, which will show not only where spots are but how much they cost. Meanwhile, the costs will rise or fall based on how many people are looking for parking at a given time. The end result is less circling for spaces, which reduces traffic and pollution and tsuris. It also increases parking revenue; in Downtown, revenue went up 2.5 percent after Express Park was installed, and yet average hourly parking rates dropped.
Along with the parking improvements, Westwood Village also announced a new bicycle corral on Broxton Avenue and 150 new bike racks attached to parking meters throughout the neighborhood, plus a whole bunch of new wayfinding signs that are supposed to make it easier to get around the Village.
· Westwood Village Getting Demand-Based Parking Meter Pricing [Curbed LA]
· Here's How Downtown's New Variable Parking Pricing Works [Curbed LA]
· Locking Bikes on Parking Meters Is Illegal in LA Apparently [Curbed LA]