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Matt Glaser dropped the kids off at his grandparents’ house the day he pulled into a parking lot near Sam’s bagel on Larchmont Boulevard on his way to work. He tried to supply the meter from a quarter that he kept in his car, but the coin slot was packed. He reached for his credit card, but realized that the screen showed a QR code saying “payment via app.”
He tried to scan the QR code on his phone, but the screen was very scratched with graffiti and didn’t work. So he texted the number on the “Pay to Park” sticker under the coin slot. Wait a second, and after wondering if the text had passed, he received the text with a link to the website. He opened the site over the phone and entered his credit card number and address. However, before he could complete the payment, the site warned him that he would have to pay an additional processing fee just to park for 15 minutes.
“It was only 35 cents, but they said, ‘Forget this and find an old bagel in the office,” Glaser said.
Finding parking in the LA area has been a challenge for a long time, but paying parking fees is also a lewd thing these days. Depending on whether you park in LA, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills or Pasadena, your meter may ask you to pay with a lodging, credit card, app, or a combination of all three. In public places you may need to remember the zone, space number, or license plate, but you often don’t know which ones until you reach the page station. It is enough to give up on law-abiding citizens, cross their fingers and hope that parking enforcement officers will not pass by.
As 25-year-old comedy writer Emma Parsons of Palms said, “Parking is already one of the things I hate the most. I don’t want to spend more time on it.”
Parking studyers acknowledge that the spread of parking and other payment methods acknowledge that the modern experience of parking payments can be extraordinarily complicated and frustrating. The two parking apps used by LA City (Park Smarter and Parkmobile) offer useful innovations, such as warning drivers to ensure parking sessions expire and add more time remotely, but those perks don’t seem worth it anymore if cities in the SOCAL area have contracted with another app that needs to be downloaded on the streets to avoid tickets.
With various parking apps being used in different areas around Southern California, drivers have found their experience of paying parking fees to be extraordinarily complicated.
(Kim Chapin/Los Angeles Times)
Parking apps have been around for over a decade, but researchers say Southern California is still in the early stages of evolution, with many providers fighting for it to become the default payment method for the region. Just as the universal adoption of USB-C cables streamlined the ability to charge various devices at home, whether created by Apple, Samsung or another company, experts say there is a single parking app that allows drivers to significantly reduce parking lots and lots of parking fees across the region and increase compliance. They don’t argue that one company will monopolise parking meters in Southern California or monopolise laws that limit competition, but they say a more uniform system is possible. For example, the Easypark app in Europe operates in 20 countries and over 3,200 cities.
“We’re a little behind the curve,” said Mike Manville, professor of urban planning at UCLA and author of the recent paper, “Causes and Consequences of Curb Parking Management.” “The app is not new, but it’s not completely organized to the point where you can see if you want to get standardization.”
Tony Jordan of Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the impact of parking policies on climate change, equity, housing and transportation, said he hopes a more streamlined system will come soon.
“I think we’re approaching,” he said. “This technology is getting there both in enforcement and payments. Over the next few years, this problem could be resolved.”
“Parking is already one of my most dislikes. I don’t want to spend more time on it.”
– Emma Parsons, 25
Los Angeles, home to the country’s first highway and drive-in churches, has long been vague, if not indeed hostile to pay parking. The city installed its first parking meter in North Hollywood in the summer of 1949 (5 cents per hour), but only after the council rejected three previous attempts to place the meter on the streets in 1940, 1942 and 1946, the newspaper editorial labelled the parking meter and “installed fairly for side-style turnstyle.”
The city maintained the price of the meter, which was fixed for 17 years from 1992 to 2008. This price has increased the price of $4 an hour in meter parking lots in the busiest area. The first meter to accept credit cards was set up in 2010, years after most people stopped changing slowly. As previously said, the late Donald Shaw, a professor at UCLA and beloved guru of parking research, was one of the few inventions that remained little different since its inception in 1928.
According to LA spokesman Colin Sweeney, the LA Department of Transport operates 35,261 metres of space, including 32,944 on-street meter spaces and 2,317 off-street meter spaces. It also manages 11,347 off-street parking spaces in the lot and garage. Collectively, these meters and pay stations raised about $40 million last year.
The parking payments app was first introduced in LA in 2014, and widespread adoption of contactless options has been accelerated due to the pandemic. Despite the complaints of some drivers, the city is now leaning even further towards mobile payments in parking lots. The Text-to-Pay option will be available on all LA meters by the end of 2025, and app payments and tap-to-Pay will be installed on all LA parking meters by the end of 2026. At the same time, LA area meters will continue to accept coins and cards. (Glaeser could have paid by card with Larchmont Boulevard Meter, unless the reader was broken.
The agency is also planning to install new, improved parking lots at the LADOT parking facilities and improve signs that photograph the roads to those facilities. According to the LADOT website, there are currently no plans to add Apple Pay to the meter.
Parking apps to download based on where you go in the LA area
As providers resolve kinks and users become more familiar with the car park apps will become more intuitive over time, but for now, Angelenos needs to navigate the struggles of parking payments in the city as much as possible.
Parsons, a 25-year-old comedy writer, has been holding a quarter-filled pill bottle in both his wallet and car since moving to LA in January.
“I’ve never carried cash with me in my life, but I don’t want to download the app every time I go somewhere new,” she said. “I rarely have a dollar bill, but paying parking fees at the lodging is great. I love it.”
Leah Ferrazzani, who lives in LA and works in Pasadena, said he currently has four parking apps on his phone.
“The only thing that makes my life easier is because Pasadena is the most user-friendly and I work here, so it’s the one I use most often,” she said.
I’ve found that even the most familiar with apps, my current system is frustrating. Jonathan Baden, a 43-year-old Sherman Oaks resident and co-founder of the dating website, recently spent 10 minutes trying to find a way to pay for a Ventura Boulevard meter when his iPhone couldn’t read the on-screen QR code before he finally gave up. In the end, he spent more time paying for parking than running errands.
Badeen is pleased that the meter has evolved from the quarterly era he remembers from his early days in August’s LA, but he believes the parking app doesn’t make parking easier for anyone.
“Unless a country, city or the whole metro area wants to standardize something, or they want to slap Apple’s wages there, I think that’s a bad idea,” said the man who invented the swipe. “And I know something about the app.”
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