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.Key steps include installing the necessary metering technologyand developing a city ordinance specifying that prices will beallowed to vary such that a few spaces remain vacant on eachblock.The legislation should also establish that local districts willreceive a portion of the resulting revenue for investing in publicimprovements.Recommendation 7: Enforce the existing California parking cash-out law at the municipal level in cities where a significant share of employ-ers lease parking.Motivation: With parking cash-out, workers whose employerslease parking on their behalf are given the option of receiving cashin lieu of free parking.This creates a strong financial incentiveto carpool, walk, bike, or take transit instead of driving alone towork, thereby reducing the number of commuters on the road.Implementation obstacles: California requires that firms withmore than 50 employees who lease parking for their employeesoffer the cash-out option, but the law is not enforced.We arerecommending that cities take the necessary steps to enforce thelaw in place of the state.The primary challenges are likely to fallin the legal and administrative categories, but it is not anticipatedthat they will be difficult to overcome.Importantly, businesses areunlikely to oppose this strategy because (1) the parking cash-outoption is viewed as a valuable employee benefit and (2) it costslittle to implement, since the law applies only to firms that leaseparking and can choose to offer the cash instead of paying thelease (Shoup, 1997).Implementation steps: Cities can pursue this strategy immedi-ately.The City of Santa Monica already requires parking cash-out for qualifying employers, and the City of Los Angeles isexploring a promising approach under which employers that leaseparking would be required to offer parking cash-out as part of lii Moving Los Angeles: Short-Term Policy Options for Improving Transportationthe business-permitting process.Parking cash-out should leadto significant reductions in the number of employees who drivealone to work, and we further recommend that parking cash-outprograms be carefully monitored to quantify these effects.Theresulting information can then serve as a basis for reducing off-street parking requirements for real-estate developments in whichparking will be leased.Over time, as more office buildings withleased parking are developed, the number of employers able tooffer parking cash-out will increase, thus expanding the benefitsof the program.Recommendation 8: Develop and aggressively market deep-discounttransit fares to employers in areas that transit serves well.Motivation: Deep-discount-fare programs enable large organiza-tions (such as universities or firms) to purchase transit passes forall members or employees at significant discounts.When struc-tured properly, they lead to increased transit ridership, increasedtransit-operator revenues, and reduced transit operating deficits.And from the purchasing organization's perspective, they areoften cheaper than providing additional parking or other trans-portation benefits.Whereas pricing strategies recommended inthis book make driving more expensive, deep-discount passesreduce the cost of transit, thereby making it even more attractiveby comparison.Successful deep-discount programs already existin the L.A.region but have been applied only to a limited extent.Implementation obstacles: The principal obstacles are adminis-trative and should not be difficult to overcome.Initial implementation steps: Metro and other transit providersin the county can begin efforts to develop and more aggressivelymarket deep-discount-fare programs immediately.Recommendation 9: Expand BRT in urban areas with dedicatedbus-only lanes on the arterial network and express freeway service in HOTlanes. Summary liiiMotivation: This recommendation will significantly improve thespeed, convenience, and reliability of public transit in Los Ange-les at relatively low cost (in comparison with current estimatesof $400 million or more per mile to construct subways).Theimproved transit options will provide viable alternatives for thosewishing to avoid the higher price of automotive travel that wouldresult from pricing strategies and will benefit the many L.A.resi-dents who already rely on the bus system for their daily travelneeds.Thus, current transit users, new transit users, and thosedriving on less congested roads will all be better off.While theMetro Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley includes14 miles of exclusive right-of-way, Metro Rapid bus lines share thestreets with general traffic and must therefore suffer the same con-gested travel conditions.Metro Rapid lines include many featuresof the BRT concept that has taken the transit world by stormin recent years, including signal prioritization, more-frequent ser-vice, limited stops, real-time next-bus information at stops, and soon.These features have improved BRT travel speeds by about 20to 30 percent over conventional local bus service (Metro, 2000) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]