ExpressPark Hits Bump When Bids Come In Over Budget
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
10,000 new parking meters that accept credit card payments were installed by the city this summer.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The city's ambitious project to smarten up Downtown's street parking spaces will have to take another spin around the block before getting underway. A pair of bids to implement the ExpressPark project came in over the Department of Transportation's $18.5 million budget, so the department is reworking some of the requirements before asking for new bids.
The RFP released late last year called for 5,500 on-street parking spaces around Downtown to be fitted with new high-tech meters and sensors to detect whether the spot is in use. Both the meter spaces and 7,500 garage spaces would be tied into a central computer system that would allow at-a-glance views of realtime parking data.
In an attempt to bring the bids into budget, the department won't remove any of the elements, but may have to scale some of them back, said spokesman Bruce Gillman this week.
The re-bid delay is only expected to set the project back about a month, with construction still set to be completed this summer.
ExpressPark is part of Metro's federally-funded ExpressLanes demonstration project.
Simon Hartigan on February 15, 2011, at 08:00PM – #1
The more expensive parking gets in DTLA, the better. Anything to remove cars.
Hao Cui on March 29, 2011, at 07:10PM – #2
@simon, have you thought about the residents, its pretty rediculous to have your friends come over only to choose between $10-15/day flat rate or pay $4 dollars an hour for street parking.