Nineteen County Beach Lots Drop to Winter Rates September 28. The Winner Is Free on Weekdays.

One test sets the order: what the county’s own rate sheet charges a car to sit in each lot through the middle of an ordinary weekday.

Park at Venice next Saturday and Los Angeles County will charge you $18. Park there the Saturday after and it will charge you $9. Nothing about the lot changes in between — not the sand, not the ocean, not the hour the gate closes. What changes is that Monday, September 28 is the first day of winter as the Department of Beaches and Harbors reckons it, and on that morning all nineteen lots it runs on the county coastline drop to winter prices.

The department doesn't announce this. It's a line of small type at the top of the rate sheet its parking page links to: winter runs from the day after the last Sunday in September to the Friday before Memorial Day. The last Sunday in September this year is the 27th. We priced all nineteen coastline lots off that sheet — the copy stamped May 29, 2026 — and then set it beside the sheet the same department published effective June 1, 2016, because a price that hasn't moved is also a finding.

The order below is one number: what a car pays to sit in each lot through the middle of an ordinary, non-holiday weekday once winter rates start. Ties break on hours, meaning how long that money actually buys, and then on the weekend rate, because that's the day most people go. Below $6 the order is arithmetic. At $6 it's arithmetic until it isn't, and then it's an argument, which is what a ranking is for.

Two things fell out of reading the sheets side by side. Sixteen of the nineteen lots post a daily rate; fifteen of them charge $6 for a winter weekday and the sixteenth charges $2, and those are the same two numbers the 2016 sheet printed. And the county keeps two calendars that don't agree with each other. Prices turn to winter on September 28. Closing hours don't turn until November 1.

1. White Point / Royal Palms, San Pedro — $0, and the county will still sell you a $150 pass for it

First place is free, and that isn't a figure of speech. The rate sheet's line for White Point reads, in full: "Upper Lot Meters: Weekdays: FREE | Weekends: ¢25 per 10 min (90 min. max) | $1 min." Nothing on this coast beats nothing. The 2016 sheet priced the same meters at 25 cents per 10 minutes with no weekday exception, which makes this the one rate in the county that has fallen to zero in a decade.

The lower lot at 1699 West Paseo del Mar is ordinary enough: $3 from 6 to 9 a.m., $6 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $3 after that, and $8 all day on a winter weekend. What earns the top spot is the sentence the free line forces onto the rest of the sheet. White Point is one of exactly two lots — Dockweiler's Grand Avenue is the other — where the department's $150 Annual Beach Parking Pass is good, and that pass, by its own page, "works all day Monday – Friday all year."

So the county sells $150 a year for weekday parking at a lot whose upper deck already charges nothing on a weekday, if you can get a space in it. The pass is still worth buying for the other lot. Read the pass page before you read the price.

2. Torrance Beach, 387 Paseo de la Playa — $2, all day, one number

Two dollars, from 6 a.m. until the gate closes, with no morning band and no afternoon band to read. Every other attended lot on this coast hands you a grid; Torrance charges one price for the whole weekday, and it is the lowest attended price in the county by four dollars. On a winter weekend it behaves like everyone else — $3 early, $6 midday, $3 late — and in summer the weekday rate climbs all the way to $3.

The 2016 sheet has Torrance at $2 on a winter weekday too, under the same 6 a.m. opening. Ten years, and the cheapest attended parking on the Los Angeles County coastline hasn't moved a cent. If one number on this page deserves to be famous, it's that one.

3. Dockweiler — Imperial Highway, 11999 Vista del Mar — $6, and the $6 lasts sixteen hours

Here's the placement worth arguing about, and I'll defend it in one sentence: six dollars at Dockweiler buys sixteen hours and six dollars at Zuma buys seven, and I'm not paying the difference for quieter air.

The sheet gives Imperial Highway a single winter weekday line — 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., $6 — where the Malibu lots give you $3 until 9, $6 until 4, and $3 after that. Same money, more than double the day. The winter weekend rate is $8, identical to Zuma's. The summer weekend rate is $13 against Zuma's $15. It's also one of five county lots where an RV or a bus may park at all, at twice and three times the daily rate respectively, and the entrance the sheet ties to the Dockweiler RV Park — the one place in the whole system where the county will let a vehicle stay overnight.

The objection is the obvious one, and everyone in this county has made it: this is the sand directly under the departing jets at LAX. Fine. The ranking measures what the money buys, and no other six dollars on this coast buys sixteen hours. Third, and I'd defend it in traffic.

4. Will Rogers Lot 5 at Castle Rock — $6 midday, $8 on a weekend, and the window got longer

Four dollars from 6 to 9 a.m., $6 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., $4 after five. Eight hours of midday for six dollars, which is an hour more than the Malibu lots allow, and $8 on a winter weekend against the $9 the other two Will Rogers lots charge. Its meters run 25 cents per 10 minutes with a $1 credit-card minimum. One housekeeping note we turned up in the comparison: the current sheet prints the same address, 17940 Pacific Coast Highway, for Lot 5 and for the Coastline meters, where the 2016 sheet put Lot 5 at 17700.

It is also the one entry on this page that got more generous. In 2016 its winter weekend $8 covered 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; the current sheet runs the same $8 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its summer weekend $13 stretched further still, from a 9-to-5 window to 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Two extra hours, same price, no announcement.

5. The three Venice lots — Rose, Venice and Washington — $6, and the biggest fall in the county

Venice is where the flip actually lands. A winter weekday is $6 against a summer weekday's $9; a winter weekend is $9 against a summer weekend's $18. Nowhere else on this coast does the price halve. The three addresses — 300, 2100 and 3100 Ocean Front Walk — carry identical rates, and all three run to 10 p.m. in both seasons, which no Malibu lot does. Four dollars gets you in after 5 p.m. on a winter weekday and buys you the whole evening.

There's a catch in the ten-year comparison, and it's the one line on this sheet that quietly got worse. The 2016 sheet gave Venice's $6 weekday band from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The current sheet runs the same $6 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Identical price, two fewer hours, weekdays only; the weekend bands didn't move at all. That is the kind of change nobody has to announce, because technically nothing went up.

6. Will Rogers Lots 1 and 3 — Chautauqua and Temescal Canyon — $6 midday, $9 on a weekend

At 14800 and 15800 Pacific Coast Highway, priced as a pair: $4 early, $6 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., $4 after five, and $9 all day on a winter weekend. They sit a dollar behind Lot 5 on winter weekends and two behind it on summer ones, $15 against $13, for the crime of being closer to the good part of the beach.

Both take 25-cent, 10-minute meters with a $1 card minimum, which is the rate to use if you're there for an hour rather than a day. Lot 3 is also one of the five lots on the sheet that will take an RV. Sixth place here is not an insult; it's a dollar.

7. Dockweiler's Grand Avenue and Youth Center lots — $6 for seven hours, and the better half of the $150 pass

Grand Avenue at 12790 Grand Avenue and Vista del Mar, and the Youth Center lot at 12501 Vista del Mar: $3 from 6 to 9 a.m., $6 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $3 after four, $8 all day on a winter weekend and $13 on a summer one. Seven hours of midday rather than eight, which is the entire reason they sit below Venice and the Will Rogers lots and not above them.

Grand Avenue is the second lot the $150 annual pass covers, and it's the stronger case for buying one. At $6 a winter weekday and $8 a summer weekday, the pass clears its own price somewhere between the 19th visit and the 25th. The pass page also prints a restriction the rate sheet doesn't: from Memorial Day weekend through the last Sunday in September, the pass is only valid after 4 p.m. on weekends and on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. Buy it in October and eight months go by before that clause wakes up.

8. The Malibu five — Nicholas Canyon, Point Dume, Surfrider, Zuma and Topanga — $6 for seven hours, and the only real increase on the sheet

One grid covers all five: $3 from 6 to 9 a.m., $6 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $3 after four, $8 all day on a winter weekend. Seven hours for six dollars is the shortest $6 on the coast, and it is the reason the most famous beaches in the county finish eighth on a page about money. Zuma also carries meters, at 50 cents per 15 minutes with a $1 minimum.

Summer is where the five separate, and where the only real increase in ten years lives. On the 2016 sheet a summer Saturday at Zuma cost $10 — the same as Nicholas Canyon, farther up Pacific Coast Highway at 34000. Today Zuma is $15 and Nicholas Canyon is still $10. Point Dume, Surfrider and Topanga went from $14 to $15. Zuma's meters moved too, from 25 cents per 10 minutes to 50 cents per 15, which is $2 an hour where it used to be $1.50. If you've had the feeling for a few years that Zuma got expensive, the sheet agrees with you, and almost nothing else on it does.

One oddity, thrown in free. The highest holiday rates on this coast are up here: $15 per car on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day at Nicholas Canyon, Point Dume, Surfrider and Zuma, and $11 at Topanga, against $6 to $9 everywhere else in the system. Nicholas Canyon is the cheapest lot in Malibu on a summer Saturday and tied for the most expensive lot in the county on January 1.

Nicholas Canyon has a fair complaint about finishing here, and it should make it. On a summer Saturday it is $10, cheaper than every lot above it except Torrance, and it lands in eighth only because it shares a winter grid with four lots that cost more than it does. The winter numbers are what this page ranks, so the rank stands. If you're reading this in July rather than October, move it up five places.

9. Dockweiler — 62nd Avenue meters, 6201 Pacific Avenue — $7 to stay all day, which used to be impossible

Fifty cents per 15 minutes, capped at $7 on a winter weekday, $9 on a winter weekend, $9 on a summer weekday and $13 on a summer weekend. That's a dollar more than the lots above it, and this page ranks by price, so ninth.

It belongs on the short list of things that improved anyway. In 2016 this was a 90-minute meter at 25 cents per 10 minutes: an hour and a half, then move the car. Today the meter runs all day and stops charging at $7. The rate per minute went up and the thing you are allowed to do there changed entirely.

10. Dan Blocker and Coastline — 90 minutes, and then you leave

At 26200 and 17940 Pacific Coast Highway: no daily rate, no cap, no attendant. Fifty cents per 15 minutes with a 90-minute maximum, winter and summer alike. Ninety minutes is $3, which reads competitively right up until you notice that it is also the end of your visit.

They finish last because this ranking asks what a day costs and these two don't sell one. In 2016 they were 25 cents per 10 minutes under the same 90-minute cap, which put the maximum stay at $2.25 against today's $3 — a 33 percent increase on the only two lots where you couldn't have stayed anyway.

The comparable: Santa Monica is five weeks behind

The county's flip has a consequence neither agency has any reason to mention. Santa Monica runs its own beach lots and prices them by the month — April through October, then November through March — in the pricing table behind the rates the city put into effect on January 12, 2026. The county's winter starts September 28. Santa Monica's starts in November.

For the 34 days from September 28 through October 31, then, two agencies price the same shoreline on two different calendars. A weekday in Santa Monica's Central Beach Zone — lots 1N through 3N and 1S through 3S, the ones by the pier — is $20 under the table's April-to-October column, and $8 once November arrives. A weekday at the county's Venice lots, south of the city line, is $6 starting the 28th. The city's northern and southern beach zones are $12 weekdays through October. The county's most expensive weekday anywhere on its coast is $6.

The permits tell the same story from the other end. Santa Monica's annual Day Beach permit went from $155 to $186 in January and its senior beach permit from $25 to $30. The county's annual pass is $150 and its senior pass is $25 — the same $25 the 2016 sheet printed, for California residents 62 and up, good all day Monday through Friday and until 9 a.m. on weekends at certain lots. Santa Monica's new table also replaces the free parking it previously gave holders of a valid disabled person placard with 50 percent of the posted rate. The county sheet still says placard holders park free on non-holiday weekdays.

What the sheet is actually telling you

Read the two rate sheets next to each other and the story isn't inflation. It's stillness. All sixteen lots that post a daily rate charge exactly what they charged in June 2016 for a winter weekday: fifteen at $6, Torrance at $2. Every meter on the 2016 sheet cost 25 cents per 10 minutes; four of them now cost 50 cents per 15, and the rest are still at the 2016 price. One of them, White Point's upper lot, went the other way and became free. One summer rate, Zuma's Saturday, rose 50 percent. That is the decade.

Then there are the calendars, which is where I'd spend the 34 days. The sheet puts the rate change at the day after the last Sunday in September and the closing-hours change at November 1, so the lots keep their 8:30 p.m. summer close all through October. Five weeks of winter prices and summer light, on nineteen lots, and the only place either date is written down is a footnote on a PDF.

Monday, September 28, then. Six dollars at most of them, two at Torrance, nothing at White Point's upper deck on a weekday. The pay stations take $1 and $5 bills, issue no change, and want $2 minimum on a card; the meters will take $1. Bring the card, or bring exactly six dollars.