Click above to visit the survey website.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how you get to Metro stations — please take the survey! As you might have guessed, Metro is trying to gather more information about how riders use the 22,000-plus parking spaces at its bus and rail stations.
Click here to take the survey in Spanish.
Categories: Policy & Funding, Projects
Why do I, coworkers and tourist have to ride the G bus in unsafe conditions while people that do not take the train park in the Aviation Lot for FREE and ride the G shuttle to and from the airport. How convenient in very packed busses. 80 – 90 % do not ride the train and park for FREE. This has been going on for YEARS. Is this how we treat tourist and others that take the train? Please Respond
If you want me to take Metro to work, let me park for free. Otherwise, I’ll just drive to work where I can park for free.
If Metro is here to try to reduce congestion on our freeways and streets, they need to provide incentives to get people out of their cars. Charging for parking is not an incentive. It already takes me 30 extra minutes *each way* to take Metro instead of driving.
Unfortunately, I feel that reducing freeway congestion isn’t one of Metro’s priorities. It seems that Metro instead focuses most of its energy on providing rides to those without vehicles without paying any attention to trying to reduce gridlock on our roads.
Honestly, at this point many people could careless whether you go back to the car or not. If you think it’s more worth it to deal with the bad traffic jams on the freeways over ponying up a buck for the parking space, then that’s your decision. Why should LA taxpayers and the rest of the Metro riders who never use those free parking be held hostage for your selfish reasons?
It’s just like how Metro ended the honor system. People threatened they won’t ride Metro anymore and would rather walk or go back to driving instead unless they gave into their demands that Metro keep the system free for all. They came back to riding Metro anyway because it’s the convenience that matters and actually paying for the ride is more convenient than walking or driving congested streets. Metro actually gained more riders and gained more revenues by ending the honor system which they should’ve done long ago.
I think that once Metro starts adding parking fees, most of the people who park and ride for free will go back to driving for a while. But they’ll then remember how bad the traffic jams were and the stress that comes with it that it isn’t worth it so they’ll come back to Metro and pony up the parking fee for the sake of not dealing with the traffic and letting someone else do the driving.
Metro needs to take a stronger stance in these things. Parking is not an incentive anymore to make people try out Metro. It’s a competitor to the freeway and self driving and Metro is offering a service of convenience to avoid the jammed packed freeways and surface streets and letting someone else doing the driving so naturally, those conveniences should come with additional fees.
End free parking, it’s long overdue. If people want to go back to driving because they want to scrooge on parking fees, let them. At this point, it’s an empty threat. Chances are and big chances at that, is that they be coming back to ride Metro within a month and paying for the parking fee, and even begging to pay a premium for a monthly parking pass than dealing with the 2 hour bumper-to-bumper traffic jams every morning and afternoon every weekday.
Is the survey only in English?
I don’t have the link to non-English survey but have asked staff if one exists. Will let you know either way in the morning.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
If you want to take the survey in Spanish, please text 323-688-4659 and type in the letter ‘a.’
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
[…] The Source announced an online survey in which the agency is soliciting input on its station parking. Take the […]
For Q-3 Time arrived at station parking. You don’t have a selection for people like me arriving between 6am and 7am… .or you don’t care about that? Doesn’t make sense….
The first question only allows one answer, but in fact I take a bus to the Metro station on the way to work in the morning and I walk to the station after work in the evening. So either answer would be misleading and I’m not going to contribute to a survey that will inevitably produce useless data.
The biggest hurdle to getting to my nearest metro station is the obstacle course of garbage and animal (usually) dung on the sidewalk near my station. Plenty of people living out of their cars down the street from my station. They don’t treat their block very well. Occasionally civic groups will come in and clean the place up. Within two weeks it’s a mess again. Unfortunately safe and clean sidewalks was not an answer in the survey.
So I said it was bike lanes instead. Those couldn’t hurt.
Parking shouldn’t be free. But why wasn’t that a question?
No questions about whether or not the lots should charge for parking?
Took the survey. But as is typical of surveys, it is too simplistic to capture my actual behavior, starting with the first question: “How do you arrive at the Metro station?” The survey asks for one answer, but the truth is that three answers apply to me: sometimes I drive and park at the station lot, sometimes I drive and park outside the station, and sometimes I take the bus. It mostly depends on the time of day, and especially on when I intend to get back: if I expect to get back late then I’m much more likely to drive, because the connecting bus service becomes rather miserable in the evening. The follow-up questions are dependent on my first answer — for example, I use different stations depending on how I get there (when I drive I go to a station with parking, but when I take the bus I go to the station on my bus route). I answered based on my most frequent behavior, but I really wish survey designers would put out surveys that can better capture complexities.