LA Metro is offering households up to $600 to park a car for 5 weeks — but an app tracks your odometer. Here’s the fine print

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.