[numbsafari]

So build more effective mass transit systems... We have to work harder as a nation to make it a point of pride to use public rather than private transit. We got ourselves into this pickle by convincing everyone that owning your own car was the ultimate status symbol, when in fact we have merely traded the tyranny of transit schedules for the tyranny of parking garage fees, gas taxes, foreign oil imports and trade imbalances.

[Balgair]

LA is never going to have real good mass transit. It's just too big and sparse. Currently, they are expanding the metro-expo line to Santa Monica in West LA. It is going along Olympic Blvd. This is a choice they had to make. The majority of sky-rises are along Wilshire Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd. These parallel Olympic at a distance of about 1500 to 3000 feet to the north (http://imgur.com/FduYKNf). Thats about 11 minutes without stoplights to Wilshire from Olympic. Now, stations aren't going to be everywhere along Olympic (http://imgur.com/8asaNwq). For all of west LA, there are 4 stops. Getting to your job on Wilshire is going to take more than 11 minutes, maybe 30. The time you may have saved in taking the train, will be out weighed by the walk to work. Not to mention that most of the people working there are not living along the expo line, many live in the valley. Getting a line from the Valley to West LA is all but impossible. There isn't a lot of land to put it on. You have maybe Sunset to squeak it though, and that's not all that flat of land either.

You have to get to work, and you want to do it quickly. The train is not going to do that unless you have a lot more of them going everywhere. People commute a long ways in LA and there is no thing as 'counter-commute.' LA has no central place. There is a downtown, but its just a place like any other.

LA is the very definition of a poorly planned city. But trying to horn it into a planned city will take many many years. You have tons of issues to deal with. You might be able to encourage a planned city, ala this metro line seeding growth in the right places. However, it is just going to take a long time.

[dalke]

Sparse areas don't have a shortage of parking, do they? That is, the context for this side branch is for when street parking is constantly full. A fix in that case is to charge for parking, and improve mass transit.

The idea around reducing zoning requirements for parking is to allow a core to emerge. And everyone's agreed that it will take a long time. But it has to start somewhere, and it's more difficult if zoning requires (say) 1.5 parking spaces per 1-bdr apartment, even when in an area well served by mass transit.

You mentioned Santa Monica. Here's their planning commission report on parking for the city - http://www.smgov.net/departments/pcd/agendas/Planning-Commis... .

It includes: Reduce residential off-street parking requirements for some housing types in the Transit-Oriented and Mixed Use area to reflect actual Census data for household vehicle ownership and eliminate the visitor space requirement in all areas. Reduce off-street parking requirements for certain types of commercial uses (general office, hotels, restaurants, markets) in the Transit-Oriented and Mixed Use areas.

It also points out that while there is a "Perception of parking scarcity", that scarcity doesn't really exist. Indeed, "Santa Monica, like many other cities state and nationwide, has a parking supply that exceeds parking demand." Instead, "drivers will almost always choose an on-street space over an off-street space and indicates that the management of parking resources, not the supply, is the underlying issue."

[numbsafari]

These take many, many years. The trick is to not throw your hands up and say "it's impossible", but to dig in for the long haul and support leadership that has vision.

Also... there's nothing that Eminent Domain can't fix. Ask the people whose homes were demolished to build the supergiant highways that LA is so fond of.

[moskie]

This actually makes me curious about how much the housing crisis we find ourselves in now relates to America's love affair with the car. Afterall, the explosion of suburbia goes hand in hand with that love affair. Perhaps it's a chicken-or-the-egg problem....

... but maybe not. Maybe if it weren't the demand of car-centric transportation systems, and thus car-centric city planning, perhaps the housing we would have otherwise built would have avoided the housing crisis we're sweating over now. Or would have at least mitigated the crazy supply and demand problems we're facing.