Let Laguna VOTE! holds Kick-Off

FLASH: 30 July 2013  Concerned Laguna Beach residents met to organize, form strategy, and dispatch a resident action committee to oppose the City's plans for building a parking garage without a vote from residents.

 

State agencies and consultants hold reservations about the garage:

• California Department of Transportation:  "The Department prefers more remote parking..."
• Laguna Beach City response to EIR:  "An alternative project site would be financially unfeasible"
• $80,000 traffic consultant Workshop I:  "A multi-modal transport plan is preferred to building parking garages"
• MACTEC Engineering:  "Groundwater was encountered at depths from 13 to 23 feet below grade"  (expected at 30 MSL)
• Fact Check:  Construction will displace 380 existing parking spaces for 5 years  

Read more facts at             "Let Laguna VOTE!"

400 VIP Parking Spaces for only $40k

Bryan Jones is the Transportation Director for the city of Carlsbad, Department of Public Works. Here is his what he says:

We added 200 custom "bike the village" Dero Bike Racks to Carlsbad's downtown village...equates to 400+ new VIP parking spaces for customers for about $40,000 total! As compared to $10,000-$15,000 per vehicle parking space...equals inexpensive rejuvenation! Our business owners were shocked to see how many customers ride now! And now I get calls from business owners to install them near their business as they see the value it is having for other businesses!

Build it and they will come. -LS

Flexible Parking Requirements Spur Business in Santa Monica

(This information is condensed from a recent post at LA.StreetsBlog.org.) As Laguna Beach plans to develop a multi-million dollar parking garage on Laguna Canyon Road, lessons may be learned from a garage building project nearby. Santa Monica’s commercial areas were sleepy, under-performing and shabby just a few decades ago. To revive it's commercial district the city approved millions in funding for municipal parking structures in the heart of downtown. City leaders planned to revitalize the business district but those garages alone weren’t enough to generate the commercial transformation Santa Monica sought. What Santa Monica needed was a change in approach to parking requirements for commercial business. The critical policy change was to create a flexible process allowing developers to build, and businesses to operate with fewer on-site parking requirements. In 1986 the Santa Monica City Council approved a business assessment district to fund commercial improvements. Highlights of the changes were:

• It gave developers the ability to opt-out of required on-site parking by paying a fee.
• It allowed changes in a given building's land-use specification, the required amount of parking necessary for a retail establishments was relaxed.

Today downtown Santa Monica has thriving  pedestrian-friendly retail streets filled with successful restaurants and shops.  The north side of Wilshire Blvd maintained the old pre-1986 Standard Parking Requirements,the south side implemented the new Flexible Parking Requirements.

Properties in the flexible parking requirement area generate eight times more sales tax revenue per parcel than the properties in the standard parking requirement area. Businesses are generating all that revenue with a fraction of the onsite parking.

• Parcels with flexible parking had an average of 4.4 spaces each.
• Parcels in the standard parking averaged a hundred spaces each.
• For flexible parking 80% of the street frontage was retail
• For standard parking 30% was dedicated to retail despite ten times the amount of frontage dedicated to parking infrastructure.

These charts show to what extent the 1986 council decision was responsible and how much difference was due to change in parking policy.

 

So, the flexible side of Wilshire Boulevard has lots of thriving businesses, less on-site parking and a more pleasant pedestrian environment. The standard side has fewer businesses but more parking spaces including surface parking lots two blocks from the ocean. Santa Monica discovered how to create a vibrant pedestrian-friendly district by reducing on-site parking.

For tables of this data and the complete article see the recent post at  LAStreetsBlog.org. This data is from a recap article for the  L.A. Department of City Planning by graduate student Carter Rubin. His research adviser was the inimitable parking guru, UCLA Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup. Read the report in its entirety here.

-LS

Safe Driving Rules

Lots of cyclists on the road this summer, please remember these safe driving rules-of-thumb:

Don't drive in the O-Zone

• When you pass a cyclist without crossing the yellow line you are breaking the law.
• When you pass a cyclist while oncoming traffic is present you are breaking the law.
• When you pass a cyclist in a no-passing zone you are breaking the law (this should be obvious yes? Because it’s called a “no passing zone.”)

-Albert McWilliams

The Transition to Sustainable Mobility

Source: “How to Increase Cycling and Walking-Lessons from Across the Globe”, John Pucher Rutgers University,  Ralph Buehler Virginia Tech, (all 107 slides 25Mb).  New Book: “City Cycling” summary and TOC. (Click control to pause, bottom right)

Advantages of Cycling Mobility



Source: “How to Increase Cycling and Walking-Lessons from Across the Globe”, John Pucher Rutgers University,  Ralph Buehler Virginia Tech.  New Book: “City Cycling” summary and TOC. (Click control to pause, bottom right)

Global Cycle Share

Source: “How to Increase Cycling and Walking-Lessons from Across the Globe”, John Pucher Rutgers University,  Ralph Buehler Virginia Tech.  New Book: “City Cycling” summary and TOC. (Click control to pause, bottom right)

Global Cycling Safety Trends

Source: "How to Increase Cycling and Walking-Lessons from Across the Globe", John Pucher Rutgers University,  Ralph Buehler Virginia Tech.  New Book: "City Cycling" summary and TOC. (Click control to pause, bottom right)