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Los Angeles County is paying people to stop driving. An LA Metro experiment — the One Car Challenge — is giving eligible households up to $600 to keep one of their cars parked at home for five weeks and give getting around without them a go.
California has more registered vehicles than any other state — by a long shot. Los Angeles County, alone, has nearly 7.5 million registered motor vehicles and about 9.7 million residents, 6.7 million of whom are licensed drivers.
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Los Angeles city, specifically, has the worst traffic in the country, according to Consumer Affairs research. There are 8 hours and 27 minutes, on average, of weekday congestion, which is only continuing to climb. It’s why Los Angeles city commuters spend at least 10 full days a year inching on and off the brakes.
The One Car Challenge is designed to test whether financial incentives can persuade people to replace some of those single-occupancy car trips with carpooling or public transportation — or with two wheels or two legs.
In its second phase, which dramatically expands an earlier pilot, Metro is calling on 2,000 households across Los Angeles County to park up.
Phase 1 started in Santa Monica
The first One Car Challenge took place in Santa Monica in 2023, according to LA Metro, which partnered with the city to recruit roughly 300 households that had at least two cars. Participants were asked to leave one vehicle parked at home for five weeks and use other forms of transportation instead. In exchange, they could receive up to $599, along with a $50 TAP transit card and free Metro Bike Share rides, according to LA Metro’s The Source.
The goal wasn’t necessarily to convince people to permanently give up their cars. Instead, researchers wanted to see whether residents accustomed to driving everywhere would discover that some of their trips could easily be made another way.
Early signs suggest that the strategy worked. Metro’s analysis found a statistically significant shift away from single-occupancy vehicle trips, particularly in favor of walking and micromobility. The initial phase of the program revealed that participants were 2.6 times more likely to avoid driving an extra vehicle, which ultimately resulted in a 16.16% increase in people using public transit, walking or biking.
But researchers were less able to draw firm conclusions about reductions in total vehicle miles traveled because of the pilot’s relatively small sample size.
Metro is taking the experiment countywide
Phase 2 of the One Car Challenge takes the pilot much further. Rather than focusing on one relatively transit-friendly city, Metro is expanding the challenge throughout Los Angeles County, with approximately 2,000 households eligible to participate.
According to the LA Metro, more than two million households in Los Angeles County have two or more vehicles, but 30% of the county’s daily trips could be made by taking public transit or another method of travel.
While the program is particularly focused on two-or-more-car households, the program is also open to households with just one car — meaning a person could effectively go car-free for the entirety of the five-week experiment.
Participants must be 21 years old and agree to leave at least one car parked at home for five weeks while experimenting with other ways of getting around. In doing so, they’ll earn a maximum payout of $600 per household — which is coming out of a $2 million Regional Early Action Planning (REAP 2.0) grant from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG).
LA Metro is using technology to make sure that participants actually stick to the challenge. Participants must use the GoCarma app to document their travel and vehicle mileage, and they may be asked to submit odometer photos before, during and after the five-week period.
The timing of the challenge is significant as Los Angeles County is looking to reduce traffic and encourage sustainable transportation ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Los Angeles expects to face an enormous influx of visitors and transportation demand. More than 12 million people from more than 200 countries have already registered for tickets.
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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: LA Metro’s ‘One Car Challenge’ pays you $600 to park your extra car for 5 weeks and take public transportation instead
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