The Price of Parking at LAX Soars : Airport: Lot rates are up as much as 100%. But the increase in revenues may be offset by a reduction in airline landing fees.

Many travelers returning to Los Angeles International Airport this week are in for an unpleasant post-Christmas surprise: The cost of bailing a car out of airport parking lots jumped this month as the first rate increase in seven years quietly took effect.

The daily rate for parking in the central terminal area soared 50% on Dec. 1--from $10 to $15. Rates for the first hour of parking in garages closest to the terminals doubled from $1 to $2. Long-term rates in lots on the outskirts of the airport also increased sharply. Parking meter rates remained the same.

Airport officials said steep price increases for some 25,000 spaces were intended to change parking patterns by encouraging long-term users to switch to less expensive fringe lots, freeing up spaces closest to the terminals for short-term users.

The price increases will boost total receipts from LAX garages and parking lots by more than 47%, to $56 million a year.

While motorists will now pay an estimated $18 million more a year to park, airlines are expected to be paying less to use LAX.

“It is very likely that some portion of that will be reflected in lower landing fees,” said Donald Miller, the Department of Airports’ deputy executive director. “If not matched by increased expenditures, the beneficiary is the airlines.”

Miller said the airport uses a complex formula that balances parking fees against aircraft landing fees, which he called “comparatively modest” by national standards. “The way our financial system works here,” Miller said, “every $1 in increased fees means $1 less in landing fees for the airlines.”

But Miller said the Board of Airport Commissioners’ decision to dramatically increase parking rates for the first time since 1982 was not hinged on a reduction of landing fees.

The commissioners are appointees of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who reviewed and approved the increases, airport officials said.

“It’s a big jump,” said Joseph R. Clair, manager of landside operations at LAX. “It took a long time to get this rate increase through. There was a reticence to raise rates.”

Clair said Bradley approved the rate increase “a long time ago.”

Miller said it took 1 1/2 to two years for the parking rate hike to go through the approval process, in part because of “preoccupation with problems in the parking lots.”

More than 30 LAX parking lot employees were arrested in May, 1988, on suspicion of embezzlement of public funds for allegedly stealing parking lot revenues. At the time, sources estimated that $2 million was taken by contract employees who substituted low-price tickets for higher-value tickets and pocketed the difference.

Another $6 million was reportedly taken in thefts from airport lots in 1984.

Miller said airport officials did not want to raise rates until a new computerized parking revenue control system was in place.

Multimillion-dollar plans now call for installation of more exit booths to speed the flow of traffic out of airport lots.

Clair said the higher rates are “designed as much as anything to try to redirect parking” by discouraging long-term parking in the central terminal area where spaces are at a premium. Last year, 8.9 million motorists used LAX parking lots.

Clair said the increased rates will mean more money for airport operations, including parking lots, shuttle buses and maintenance of streets, runways, taxiways and airport facilities.

AIRPORT PARKING RATE HIKES Here are the parking rate increases imposed this month at Los Angeles International Airport in its first such increase in seven years.

LOT OLD RATE NEW RATE INCREASE Central Terminal Area $10 a day $15 a day 50% $1 first hour $2 first hour 100% Remote Lot B* $3 a day $4 a day 33% Remote Lot C** $4 a day $6 a day 50%

* (Located at 111th Street between Aviation and La Cienega boulevards)

** (Located at 96th Street and Sepulveda Boulevard)

SOURCE: Los Angeles Department of Airports