I agree that standards are useful, but that doesn't mean they're holy. The ITE is as far as I can tell a traffic planners' Bible, even though it is hopelessly outdated. I've spoken to some planners here in Calgary and they've said that parking is always one of the more difficult problems, as the regulations demand more parking than is often really needed. And by the way, LA is such an outlier that it's not really representative. It's too low density to have good walking / transit options, but too high density to make room for highways.
2nd densest CSA in the USA, yo I would say that any modeling that has to disregard Los Angeles is useless. As I understand it, Los Angeles is Los Angeles primarily because it didn't fully participate in the highway revolts; I know the proposed map of seattle is a nightmare on wax. By not putting all the roads in, Seattle stayed livable. Los Angeles went the other way. Nonetheless, it's one outcome of a common core of development and hardly unique. It's too low density to have good walking / transit options, but too high density to make room for highways.