Driveway gates get chosen on looks and judged on how they behave two years later. The part that decides which way it goes is not the design — it is the driveway: how wide the opening is, which way the ground falls, how much room sits behind the posts, and whether a truck or a sedan is going to be nosing up to it off a busy street.
A swing gate needs clear, level arc space behind the opening and a driveway that does not rise sharply from the street. Plenty of older lots around Vernon and Huntington Park slope up toward the garage, which means a swing leaf either scrapes the concrete or has to be hung high enough to leave a gap you can see daylight through. A slide gate solves the slope problem but needs a run of fence line or wall to park itself along — usually close to the gate's own width again — and that side yard is exactly what the tighter residential lots in Maywood, Bell and Boyle Heights tend not to have. Cantilever slides buy you a track-free opening but need more counterbalance length and heavier posts. Bi-folding leaves fit short driveways where neither of the first two works, at the cost of more hardware and more to adjust later.
Anyone quoting a driveway gate installation without walking the opening and putting a level on it is guessing. The survey should cover clear width between posts after the gate hardware is accounted for, backswing or slide room, where the post footings can go without hitting a water line or the sidewalk, how far the nearest power is, and whether the gate will sit far enough back from the street for a vehicle to clear the sidewalk while it opens. That last point matters most on streets where the driveway apron is short and a waiting car sticks out into traffic.
Posts first, and they carry the whole job. Steel posts get set in dug footings with concrete, sized for the weight and leverage of the leaf they will hold — a wide, solid-panel swing gate pulls on a post far harder than an open picket one. Concrete needs to cure before the gate is hung; an installer who sets posts and hangs the same morning is building in a lean. Then the gate is hung and squared, hinges or rollers adjusted, and the latch or stop set so the leaves meet properly. If the gate is automated, the operator is mounted and anchored, conduit and low-voltage wiring run, and the safety devices set up: photo eyes across the opening, reversing on obstruction, and a manual release so you can get out when the power is off. Entry hardware — keypad, remote receiver, intercom, vehicle loop or exit sensor — is wired and tested last. Expect the operator to be programmed for travel limits and force, and expect it to be demonstrated to you, including the release key.
Nearly every driveway gate is a custom driveway gate in practice, because openings are not standard widths and ready-made gates rarely land on them. What varies is how far the custom work goes. Cutting a tube steel frame to your exact opening and infilling it with pickets is one end of it. The other end is a drawn design: perforated or laser-cut panels, solid privacy sheet, horizontal slat, scrolled wrought-iron style work, house numbers worked into the face, or a frame built to match an existing wall or pedestrian gate. Infill choice changes the engineering, not just the look — solid panels catch wind and add weight, which pushes you toward heavier posts, stronger hinges and a larger operator.
Opening width, leaf weight, slide versus swing, how much steel is in the frame, the complexity of the infill, finish, automation, and how much trenching and electrical the site needs. Finish is worth asking about specifically: bare steel primed and painted on site is cheaper than a shop-applied powder coat over properly prepared or galvanized steel, and it is the first thing to show its age where gates get touched, rubbed by bumpers and tagged and scrubbed.
Before booking, ask who pulls any permit the city requires, who does the electrical connection, how the posts will be footed and how long they cure, what the gate and the operator are warranted for and by whom, and what adjustment after the first few months looks like — gates settle. Ask what happens if the gate is hit, because on commercial frontage in Vernon it eventually will be, and a design built from standard tube sections is far easier to repair than one nobody can match.