“If all mankind could look through that telescope, it would change the world,” reads a quote in the lobby of L.A.’s beloved Griffith Observatory, attributed to its benefactor Griffith J. Griffith. Well, according to a recent data crunch, the only thing holding us all back from celestially-inspired enlightenment is… more parking?
At least, that’s the finding from a study-of-sorts by Moneybarn, which factored in things like cost, availability and reviews to assign ratings to the parking situation at the world’s most popular tourist attractions. And while Griffith Observatory ranked third-to-last in overall parking ratings, it was the very worst by a wide margin when it came to the number of one-star Tripadvisor reviews that mention the word “parking.”
Now, we have some mixed feelings about this, but let’s first quickly acknowledge that, yes, parking is expensive and sometimes impossible to find at the hilltop destination. But you can avoid most of the mess by just taking a DASH bus from Los Feliz for only 50 cents—or 35 cents if you have a TAP card. Alternatively, if you don’t mind turning your observatory trip into a proper hike, there are free lots near the Greek Theatre (only when there’s not a concert) as well as along Fern Dell Drive.
Alright, so back to the rankings: We tend to have a love-hate relationship with these “studies,” which in this case was put out by an English car financing company. Is it scientific? Absolutely not. But there is some logical methodology behind it: The company combed Home Exchange, Wikipedia and PlanetWare to devise a list of the world’s most popular tourist attractions, and then each place was awarded a score (out of 10) based on the walking distance to a parking lot or garage, the number of spaces within a 10-minute walk, distance to the closest airport (Burbank, in this case), the average cost of a rideshare to said airport and the average parking cost for a three-hour, midweek afternoon visit.
With all this in mind, Griffith ranked 28 out of 30 (Disneyland came in last, seemingly due to its high cost of both parking and transit from the closest airport), with an overall score of 2.87 out of 10. But some of the numbers used to get that score seem a little off. First, it says it’s a seven-minute walk from the nearest parking lot—which isn’t quite right since there’s a lot (albeit a small one) literally right in front of the building. Second, it says there are only 142 parking spaces within a 10-minute walk—which disregards some of the closer roadside spots along West Observatory Road.
But we can’t argue with the pricing or the salty visitor reviews. Parking was free until 2016, and the rate has been steadily climbing since then, now up to $10 per hour. And that cost as well as the traffic getting up there, the limited number of spots and the likelihood that you’ll need to hoof it uphill means that 18.18% of the one-star Tripadvisor reviews mention parking—which is about double the next-worst-reviewed spot, Niagara Falls.
All that said, what else can you really expect? The observatory resides within Griffith Park’s 4,210 acres of urban wilderness, situated more than a thousand feet up a hilltop that’s only accessible—by car—via a pair of winding, hilly roads. We don’t know about you, but we’ll take more undisturbed nature over extra pavement any day. Parking prices have been raised over the years specifically to try to counteract the nightmarish traffic jams leading up there on weekends and summer evenings. (We’ve all ventured up there at least once just to find ourselves back down at Fern Dell without having found a spot, right?) Sure, it would be amazing if this was Switzerland, where trains and funiculars can take you straight to a mountaintop, but this is L.A., where some of our biggest stadiums are only kinda, sorta near public transit and it takes more than half a decade to build a 2.25-mile airport train. A seemingly stalled plan for a gondola to the Hollywood Sign could include an extension to Griffith Observatory one day, but we wouldn’t count on that to provide relief anytime soon. In the meantime, see you all on the DASH bus?