As the largest institutional landowners on the Westside,  the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are, at 388 and 419 acres respectively, the most influential players when it comes to real estate development, traffic congestion, and the provision of open space in this part of town. To that end, the Westside Urban Forum invited prominent panelists from both institutions for its monthly event. Also in attendance was County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose jurisdiction includes the VA and UCLA (even though both properties are technically exempt from local zoning controls).

The panel was supposed to discuss long-range planning efforts, but most of the official statements sounded like a defense of the status quo. Ronald B. Norby, Network Director for the VA Desert Pacific Healthcare Network, vowed to uphold the VA’s core institutional mission and put himself on record as opposing any changes in land use, either for commercial development or  ”anything that is not veteran-focused” (read: a public park).

Yaroslavsky, fielding hostile comments from local residents about insufficient public access to the VA grounds, defended current policy, explaining that “the pastoral nature of the campus is very therapeutic…healing time with the environment is crucial to patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.” When Brentwood resident Michael Cohn complained about the lack of a continuous boulevard or bicycle lanes through the property, Norby responded, “the last thing that relatives want when they’re visiting their loved one [in the cemetary] is to be disrupted by a noisy car or bicycle riding by.”

Chancellor Gene Block of UCLA was there mainly to trumpet the university’s virtues. He briefly outlined plans for more residential infill on campus, mainly dormitory and affordable housing for junior faculty. Asked about the university’s responsibility to help revitalize the struggling Westwood commercial district, Block compared it to Telegraph Avenue, the main commercial corridor near UC Berkeley, and declared that Westwood’s downtown looked pretty good by comparison!

Transportation planners in the audience wondered whether the planned Westside subway extension was influencing either institution’s long-range planning considerations. Yaroslavsky intervened with a pointed remark on 7 members of  the MTA Commission who are allegedly colluding on a “heist” of Measure R funds for the Gold Line Extension to Montclair in the San Gabriel Valley, at the expense of the Wilshire subway line. This internal feud over countywide transit funding is “about to become very public,” he warned. Meanwhile, Block focused on the university’s success in congestion management, noting that its commuter vans and ridershare programs have kept the number of daily vehicle trips to the campus steady since 1995, even as the university’s size has significantly expanded. Currently, 50% of trips involve carpooling, well above the citywide average.

As the city installs Pay Here stations in favor of individual parking meters along busy commercial corridors, any good urbanist might wonder to do with the vestigial metal “stumps” left embedded in the sidewalk as the old-style meters are decommissioned.  The Dept. of Transportation has come up with a remarkably elegant and logical solution by converting those stumps into bike racks. Even the design of the rack itself is pretty sleek.  This picture is taken on Main Street in Venice, where the racks are well-utilized at rush hour by environmentally-minded cyclists attending yoga classes at the Center for Sacred Movement.

A smart reuse of street space.

Grade: A

The DPW needs to rethink the design of its latest receptacles.

Meanwhile, just around the corner, the Dept. of Public Work’s Resource Program receives lower marks for its recent installation of clunky recycle and trash bins. Not only are they dingy and cheap-looking, they are strangely movable, sliding anywhere from one end of the block to the other over the course of the week. The outsized bins compete for space with newstands, trees, and other street furniture, encumbering the path for pedestrians. Plus the recycle bin is distinguished only by color and not by design, which almost undoubtedly results in a lower user awareness of their distinctive purposes. The openings to the recycle bin should be restricted to a slit (for newspapers) and a round hole (for cans and bottles).

Overall: Well-intentioned concept, but let’s improve the design and implementation before this innovation goes citywide. Grade: C+

Parking rates are going up in Santa Monica.

The City of Santa Monica just voted to raise parking fees at its public garages along the Promenade, after a  study concluded that “extra revenue is secondary to the money that City Hall and property owners would save if they don’t have to acquire land and build new garages. Instead, they need to better manage what exists,” according to the Santa Monica Daily Press.

This conclusion sounds practically ripped from the pages of Donald Shoup’s 800+ page tome, The High Cost of Free Parking. A professor of urban planning at UCLA, Shoup has inspired legions of fellowers, who have evidently invaded the ranks of city planning departments, particularly on the West Coast.

If you do not have the time to read Shoup’s book, simply memorize his most oft-repeated recommendation: to price public parking competitively with the hourly cost of private garages such that at any given time, 15% of the spaces are vacant and available for those most willing to pay.

Santa Monica’s decision to boost parking rates, rather than interpret its lack of peak-hour parking as a mandate to build additional garages, may be just the latest evidence of Shoup’s growing influence, at least in progressive circles.