Fri, July 16, 2004

Parking structures in Los Angeles. This is the City of the Car. It's a running joke in every other town that everyone in Los Angeles drives everywhere, and nobody carpools. Freeways are clogged, traffic is unbearable, parking is a nightmare. It seems like if this city could be good at one thing, it would be designing parking structures and creating an efficient parking structure experience.

Not so.

And here's how you know it's bad. I'll forgive and forget if the Santa Monica Place parking structure is a bit screwy. (Yes, the one from Terminator 2.) Or Century City. They're a little older. But two of the newest ones are the worst! I'm speaking of The Grove and the new Hollywood & Highland complex. H&H has this agonizing policy of cordoning off all the parking spaces on the first basement level and forcing you to drive further down – for what reason?! But we'll come back to them later.

First, it should be noted that drivers in Los Angeles are generally a fairly savvy lot. They aren't always the most cautious people, but from years of battle on the scariest streets imaginable, they've learned to be prepared for most anything. However, get them into a parking situation and they go daffy. (Merging also, but that's another story.) For some reason, LA parkers treat every space as though it's the last one ever. Maybe they're just after the closest possible space because it's more of that "Angelenos hate to walk anywhere" stereotype, I don't know. I just know that if I'm on level two of a seven level structure and someone is putting a baby stroller into a car, the person in front of me is going to slam on the brakes and force me and an entire line of cars behind me to wait until the stroller is stored, the kid latched into the car seat, everybody buckles in, and the car backs out (no less than four tries, forward and back – there's a huge car in the way with its turn signal on) before we can continue. In this scenario – and it happens often – there are always dozens of empty spaces on higher levels. But I've never been behind anyone who is willing to have faith and just keep driving forward. They'll always stop and wait, even if the trunk isn't open yet, even if it's just people walking toward a car (or near a car). My policy is: "an empty space is an empty space." Not a car with its reverse lights on, not a car with people packing shopping bags into the trunk, not a couple walking toward a car. An empty space is an empty space. I have never been in a parking structure with another motorist who shares this policy.

In fact, one time at the Burbank Media Center, Andy and Holly and I were behind an enormous SUV who did this dance for us. They waited for a group of people to pack up their IKEA purchases, while we were all forced to wait behind them. A two-way lane, too many cars were coming the other direction for any of us to pass this monstrosity of a "light truck." The poor driver in the soon-to-be-vacated space had a hell of a time, because the SUV was so close to him that he had no room to turn when backing out – which, coupled with the traffic in the other lane, yielded precious little maneuvering room. Then, after all this, the guy finally got out of the space, and the SUV just sat there. Fed up with even more waiting, I jerked the wheel, skirted around the SUV, and sailed into the newly empty space. I wanted so badly to lock the car and just walk away, but cooler heads prevailed: Holly and Andy convinced me that the SUV driver would surely key, smash, or burn my car if I were to try that. Having made my point, I conceded, and backed out. Still... God! Make us wait forever for your space to open up, and then make us wait even more while you contemplate the fact that you've stopped too close to the tiny opening to twist your giant vehicle into it at that angle? Please!

Anyway, the parkers are stupid morons, but that's not the point. The point is that the structures are so badly laid out and so poorly run. The Grove, one of LA's newest and trendiest shopping spots, bungled an excellent opportunity to showcase the very latest in parking structure technology. Instead, they went with the stacked double helix of ramps for ascending/descending the structure, which creates an awful traffic problem while also making it so that you enter and exit the spirals at different places on alternate levels, causing much confusion. Plus, the majority of the structure extends far to the east of the spiral area, meaning a lot of driving around just to get from your space to the exit. They should've put entrance on one end and exit on the other. It would've eased traffic and it would've created more "good" spaces – you'd have good spaces near each elevator or stairwell, plus good spaces near the entrance and good spaces near the exit. Maybe the cretins would spread out a little rather than huddling behind that one old lady trying to get her Hyundai out of "Park."

In the case of the Grove, they also decided to screw around with the pricing structure. At first, there was a uniform pricing structure, where you paid by the hour or half-hour (I forget which). With validation from any Grove store or restaurant, the first two hours were free; with movie validation, you got three or four hours. Then, they switched it. Now, the first hour is always free, and you always pay after that. (Some restaurants have 2-hour validations they give out, but not all. The chances of parking, getting seated at those popular dining spots, and finishing your meal in under two hours are laughable.) Let's break that down: previously, the more you stayed and shopped at the Grove, the more things you did, the more validation you collected. It provided an incentive for shoppers to make a day of it, visiting lots of stores and paying the Grove lots of money, because the parking charge would be the same as visiting one store and leaving quickly. Under the new plan, the incentive is to get in and out in under an hour. Anything else is going to cost you, and more is going to cost you more. Seeing a movie automatically costs you three bucks. Shoppers are being encouraged to go elsewhere, or at least limit their shopping to quick one-stop journeys that they can wrap up before the free period expires. Crazy.

Hollywood & Highland is another one. I already mentioned the "special" parking spots that they rope off for no reason. They also have the slack-witted drones in the reflective vests, gesturing which way to park (an LA structure mainstay), getting in the way and providing information that is either incredibly obvious ("Really? Turn left? As in, the only direction I can go?") or completely inaccurate (pointing one way when there are clearly more spaces and less traffic in the other direction). And, they almost made us late for a movie once, for the most inane possible reason. The way most of these structures do their validation is on little paper cards with a magnetic strip. When you enter the structure and receive your card, it prints a time stamp on the paper, and encodes your time on the strip. When you validate your parking, the strip is either de-magnetized or altered in some other way (depending on the structure). Sometimes, you get a visible cue that your ticket has been validated, like a stamp, in case (shock!) the magnetic reader isn't working. (It never is. In fact, most times, your card never goes near the magnetic reader when you exit the structure.) At the newly remodeled Cinerama dome complex, employees scribble on the card after magnetically validating it; I guess the stamp was too gauche.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, despite the elaborate magnetic strip technology, you almost never are asked to insert the card into a magnetic strip reader when exiting. Instead, the parking attendant takes the card, looks at the timestamp, evaluates whether the card has been validated (stamp or scribble), and charges you any remaining fee. At Century City, there's a recording that plays as you pull up to the attendant's booth. "Please insert your ticket," pleads the woman on the recording. But you never do. For a while, I thought maybe the card reader was just temporarily down. So, I'd always feint towards the card reader, in case I was supposed to follow the verbal instructions. But I'd pause long enough for the attendant to stop me, and the attendant inevitably would. He or she would extend a hand, and I'd pass over the card. Read, check squiggle, lift gate arm. After five or ten visits, I figured the card was just never supposed to go in the slot, so I stopped even attempting it; I'd just hand it to the attendant. Even without the recording, all the other magnetic stripe structures are the same way. There's a slot, but it's taped over, or the attendant is standing next to it to take your card before you put it in.

So, here's Hollywood & Highland. Andy and I are leaving there with about ten minutes to spare before we need to be at our movie. Enough time to fight traffic over to the theatre. But we have to exit the parking structure first. We drive up (three levels, because the first two are roped off; it's like a parking space exhibit at a museum), and approach the gate arm. It's our first time here, and the structure is brand new, so I am open to the possibility that maybe the card reader works. I hold out my parking card, making eye contact with the attendant who is standing right there. I extend it towards the card reader with the big sign that says "insert ticket here" and an illustration of a ticket (just like mine) going into a slot (just like the card reader). I pause for a good two seconds, looking at the guy, so he has enough time to say, "Just give it to me," if in fact (like every other structure) the card slot is just there for show. He says nothing. He makes no movement whatsoever. So, I slide the card in. The card reader accepts it, and it's gone.

The attendant: "Wait, did you just put your ticket in there?"

You mean like the sign and the diagram instructed me to do?!?!

"The ticket doesn't go in there. You'll have to pay the full amount." Full amount? We were only here for an hour and we have validation! Just press the button that ejects the ticket and you'll see. There's no button. Well, just lift the arm and we'll go. There's no way to lift the arm without the ticket. The ticket is in the card reader thingy. The only way to get it out is to open the reader with a key. Open the reader! With a key! He doesn't have the key.

Walkie-talkies. Attendant strolling to the office and back. Repeatedly. More walkie-talkies. Movie starting any minute. Finally, someone produces a key, the ticket is revealed, and we leave for free, just like we said we should. What the hell was that?

It seems to me that if you're not going to do the magnetic card reader thing, you shouldn't bother having the magnetic tickets. If you're not going to do the magnetic card reader thing, you shouldn't have a magnetic card reader. And it shouldn't have a big sign on it that directs people to put their tickets in it. And if you insist on the reader and the sign, for God's sake give the kid in the booth the fucking key!! Because I guarantee you, there are plenty of people dumber than me, and they're going to put that card in that slot, too.

But that's not all, kids. Not by a mile.

Not too long ago, I was at a structure in Santa Monica – the type that's relentlessly frequented by the wait-to-park people. Because of the way it's positioned, there's always a long line to get in; people turning left into the structure don't have a lane for it, so they're backing up traffic and often blocking the lanes they have to turn across. Plus, city bus drivers take their breaks in front of the structure, so people turning right into the structure have to block traffic trying to squeeze around the buses and into the entrance. Pedestrians snake their way across the sidewalk between cars. There's a lot of pressure and anxiety involved, and it always makes me want to move as quickly as possible when I'm at the front of the line. This time, the line was particularly long and slow. When I got to the front, where the gate arm and the ticket dispenser are, I pressed the button to get my ticket. The ticket dispenser read "Structure Full" and refused to spit out a ticket. The gate arm stayed down. People behind me were getting agitated. I could see the attendant at the booth across the way, so I started pressing the intercom button to summon his assistance. He looked at me funny. I could see cars streaming out of the structure; surely at least one of them was vacating a parking space.

What to do? The arm is down. There are four cars behind me, and who knows how many more in line on 2nd Street. I can't back up, and I can't go forward. I understand that sometimes the structure is full. But this is no way to handle it! Even with no cars behind me, the idea of backing out onto Second, between the buses, with no visibility, would be just impossible. If the structure is full, the only thing I can do is drive forward, round the bend, and drive out past the attendant. Keeping me pinned in is never going to solve the problem. At some point, the ticket dispenser gave up and emitted a ticket, and I was able to park in one of maybe twelve to fifteen spaces that were available on the top level. (Full?) But seriously. How did they even program the ticket dispenser to have that functionality? It's insane!

Karen has another great story about a wait-to-park lady, but I'll let Arksie tell it in the comments, because he'll do it more justice than I could. My point is, the parking situation, parkers and the structures that contain them, is unbelievably screwed up. There should be some sort of law.

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