Try to drive your way through Griffith Park on a weekend and you’re likely to be moving at a crawl through the congested roads and packed parking lots as you approach the Observatory. In attempts to combat the traffic, some changes are coming to the park, starting with an end to the era of free parking.
The exact start date for the metered parking has yet to be announced, but once it kicks in, it will cost $4 per hour to park in the Observatory’s lot and along West Observatory Road, East Observatory Road and Western Canyon Road. Other lots farther from the Observatory will remain free, at least for the time being, according to the Los Feliz Ledger.
If you want to avoid paying to park for your Griffith Park excursions, a free DASH shuttle route will ferry visitors between the Observatory and the Vermont/Sunset Metro station every 20 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays, for now. The costs of operating that shuttle service will be covered in part by the new income from the parking fees. The goal will be to offer the expanded bus service all days of the week depending on how this initial roll out goes.
Other changes you’ll want to keep an eye out for include making some of the park’s narrow and winding roads one-way and, eventually, upgrades to some of the roadways and infrastructure.
This project, known as the Griffith Park Observatory Circulation and Parking Enhancement Plan, originally included a public lookout point for visitors who wanted to take in the view of the landmark Hollywood sign and a shuttle route to take them up there, but by the time the plan was approved in September, that portion of the plan had been scrapped.
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