Are Angelenos Already Living Without Cars?

Kevin Farrell is the COO of Century West Partners.

LOS ANGELES—A carless L.A. may be closer than it seems. Century West Partners’ CEO Kevin Farrell says that in their K2LA project in Koreatown, only 85% of the residents own cars. In their Santa Monica projects, while many residents own cars, 70% do not use their cars daily to get to work and run errands. This is interesting for a city that is only starting to grow its public transit lines. With residents already willing to shed their wheels, L.A. could reduce its reliance on cars sooner than we think.

“We have focused heavily on transit-oriented sites because we know this market wants to be close to transit,” Farrell tells GlobeSt.com. They don’t want to live in their cars. When we are building in markets like Koreatown, we are a block away from transit. In Chicago, about half of our residents own cars. In Koreatown, we feel like we have hit a homerun because only 85% of our residents own cars. 15% of our residents don’t even own a car, which means they are taking the train and the bus and walking to work. We are finally seeing a break in the car mentality of L.A., and it will continue as long as we can build apartments near transit.”