The LA Times recently ran a story about the new parking meters downtown. While we don’t live downtown, there is certainly a parallel to our situation that can be summed up as follows:
“Don’t even get me started, this is crazy. I’ve been circling around … and they have all these signs that say you can’t park,” said Shabazz, who raised her clenched fists in the air and took a long, deep breath before looking for any parking enforcement officers and making her dash.
“I have to run quick before they catch me and I get a ticket.”
Back to our story, I went to the grocery store yesterday on my way home from work. There was a car parked in our driveway. What was I supposed to do? Here were my options:
- Park two blocks away and carry five heavy grocery bags along with my work bag
- Park two blocks away and take two trips
- Drop the groceries off at the curb (in the sun with frozen items and poultry), drive two blocks and walk
- Pull into my easement, take the groceries inside, put them away, then move my car
I decided on option number 4, which is the logical, common-sense option. While I wasn’t ticketed, I thought long and hard about the risk associated with PARKING IN FRONT OF MY OWN HOUSE. Seriously, I’ve now got to calculate the inherent risk of parking in front of my own home. I’m not on the sidewalk. I’m not blocking traffic. I’m doing no harm.
City of Los Angeles, please come to your senses. This is absurd.
Palisades Parking Patrol 
Did you see the other parallel to our situation? The other commonality? DONALD SHOUP.
The “apron” problem started pre-2006 with Michael Dukakis and Donald Shoup in the westwood/UCLA neighborhood:
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/nov/30/local/me-dukakis30
Originally, it had NOTHING to do with the ADA and EVERYTHING to do with these urban planners wanting to push their agenda on our city: eliminate “free” parking in the city. Shoup believes we should pay to park in front of our houses. That’s right. $70/month. He believes there should be permit parking or meters everywhere.
I’d like to ask Shoup why he calls parking “free”? I pay over 20k in property taxes each year for my apartment buildings. We are NOT parking for free! Crazy man.
But the city is listening to him. The Mayor spoke last night a the Westside town hall meeting and he referred to “urban planners” who believe we need to “lessen our dependency on cars.” Yes, he was practically regurgitating “Shoupenista” propaganda verbatim. The Mayor was responding to an elderly man from the audience who had said “all cars should be taxed, there should be no free parking in LA.” The audience gasped. The Mayor said “the gentleman has a good point.”
The city is obviously working with Shoup. Shoup’s ideas will generate a LOT of money for the city. Shoup had a graduate student in 2006, Victor Penada. Penada is one of the named plaintiffs in the ADA related lawsuits against the city. Our councilmembers have informed us that they have been in “discussions” with Shoup about this issue. Furthermore, the City Attorney wants the plaintiff to work with the city in the creation of a apron parking program! I’m not an attorney, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why that is problematic.
I wrote more about this on my site: http://www.stopLADOT.com
Keep up the fight!