L.A. Wages Battle of the Parking Spot : Drives for Permits Kick Into High Gear

Competition for curb-side parking spots intensifies every day in Los Angeles County as the population grows and new houses and businesses sprout up, squeezing more cars, trucks and motorcycles in with the 6 million already on the streets.

In the City of Los Angeles, “it’s harder to find a place to park today than it was (the) day before yesterday,” said Bob Yates, assistant general manager of the city Transportation Department.

It will be even harder tomorrow, if projected growth estimates are any indication. By 2020, the number of Los Angeles County residents is expected to increase 20%, from 7.5 million in 1980 to 9 million. And the Department of Motor Vehicles predicts that the number of vehicles on county roads will increase at the same rate as the population.

Annoyed Residents

From Anaheim to Northridge, annoyed residents are setting up districts where the only cars that can be legally left on the streets belong to people who live in the neighborhood and pay for parking permits.

So far, residents of neighborhoods near colleges and areas where business and entertainment districts are spreading have been among the first to resort to permit parking to ensure that convenient parking will be available. But the notion is also taking hold elsewhere.

“We’re getting more and more requests every day,” said Richard Jaramillo, the transportation engineer in charge of Los Angeles’ permit parking program. He estimated that that since January, he has sent information to about 240 people, more than twice as many as in 1986.

Songwriter Rick Olsen became a staunch advocate of permit parking the day he watered a red Mercedes and tangled with its angry owner in North Hollywood.

Tired of waiting for the Mercedes to leave the two-hour parking space in front of his house, Olsen began watering his parched lawn. Within minutes, the owner of the luxury sedan was banging on his front door.

“The guy was yelling at me about getting his car wet,” Olsen said. “Then he just sort of huffed off. I couldn’t believe it.”

The confrontation with the Mercedes owner was the last straw for Olsen. Frustrated by the dwindling supply of available parking spaces, he petitioned the city to establish a preferential parking district in his six-block neighborhood near busy Lankershim Boulevard and Universal Studios.

If established, the district would limit parking for at least part of each day to residents who spend $15 a vehicle for an annual permit.

The City of Los Angeles already has 21 permit parking districts, Jaramillo said, and 15 more have been proposed. The City Council will vote on four of the 15 within the next three months.

Increasing Number Cropping Up

Sixteen of the already established zones are on the densely developed Westside, but an increasing number are cropping up wherever business districts or universities abut residential areas, Jaramillo said.

Traffic engineers in Long Beach, Hermosa Beach, West Hollywood, Anaheim and other smaller cities report similar trends.

“People are really asking for preferential parking,” Long Beach Traffic Engineer Dick Backus said. “It’s now common knowledge that we do have such zones, and a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon.”

Few people seem pleased by the prospect. Transportation engineers emphasize that permit parking is only a short-term solution. Residents complain about having to pay for the right to park near their homes. Merchants fear that customers will drive away if they can not park conveniently.

Even Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the father of Los Angeles’ 1979 permit parking ordinance, characterized the process as “painful.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I did it,” Yaroslavsky said. “The creation of a permit parking district is a very painful exercise for a neighborhood. . . . It’s imperfect, but I don’t know a better system. You cannot make the front of somebody’s home into a virtual parking lot.”

Different Process

Although the steps to create a preferential parking district differ from city to city, the process is usually kicked off by a public hearing to determine the level of interest among neighborhood residents. A petition with the signatures of a majority of the residents is the next step.

In Los Angeles, two-thirds of the residents in at least a six-block area must sign a petition. The Department of Transportation then conducts a parking survey by checking license plates with the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if the majority of vehicles parking in the area belong to non-residents. If the survey demonstrates that 75% of the area’s parking spaces are full during peak hours and that 25% of the cars belong to non-residents, a second public hearing is scheduled.

After the hearing, the Department of Transportation makes a recommendation to the City Council’s Transportation and Traffic Committee, which ultimately decides whether or not to establish a district.

Once a preferential parking district is set up, residents affix permits to their cars for fees ranging anywhere from $15 to $30 a year, depending on the city.

People who park in the zones without permits run the risk of receiving $28 tickets. About 4,000 tickets a month have been issued in Los Angeles since January, 1987, Jaramillo said. The program is funded through ticket revenues and through the sale of permits. In fiscal year 1986-87, $150,000 worth of permits were sold, an increase of 16% from the previous year’s sales of $125,000, he said.

While it eases the headaches for some, permit parking forces others to widen their search for a legal parking spot. Some people are furious at the prospect of getting a ticket for ignoring permit parking signs.

‘This Is America’

“I pay my taxes,” said Eric Deforrestier, 29, as he returned to his car parked on a side street near Melrose Avenue, where the newest permit parking district will be set up this week. “This is a public street. Therefore I should be able to park wherever I want to, as long it’s not illegal. This is America.”

“Limiting parking I don’t think is a good idea,” said Marty Fanciuli, 30, of the preferential parking zone planned for the Melrose area. “As soon as you start limiting, where is it going to end?

“You can’t limit parking on a public street. It seems almost unconstitutional or at least elitist.”

Elitist perhaps, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that a community has the right to create preferential parking districts to reduce traffic, congestion, litter, pollution and other environmental problems. Shortly afterward, permit parking districts sprang up in Eastern cities such as Boston and Washington and in congested Western cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Most of the districts in Southern California are concentrated on Los Angeles’ Westside, and transportation engineers have predicted that if the spate of requests keeps up, the entire Westside could become a series of permit parking districts.

Such is already the case in San Francisco, where a whole swath of the city from Telegraph Hill to Golden Gate Park is zoned for preferential parking, said Norman Bray, traffic engineer for San Francisco. Although nearly 20% of the city’s streets are already posted for permit parking, Bray predicted that within a few years, preferential parking districts could extend over half of the city.

“As long as our parking crunch stays the way it is, it’s just going to keep spreading to more neighborhoods,” Bray said.

Surveys conducted in San Francisco have revealed that the number of cars on the streets dropped after permit parking hit the city in 1977. But transportation engineers suspect that the drop is probably due to a shift in the parking concentration. Cars may merely be parking in other areas.

Goals of Preferential Parking

“We think some of them may have gone to transit, but we don’t know,” Bray said, alluding to one of the goals of preferential parking, which is to induce drivers to use mass-transit systems.

Residents in Long Beach are also clamoring for permit parking. An upsurge in new development there has led to a sharp rise in requests for preferential parking zones, said city Traffic Engineer Backus.

Long Beach has had four preferential parking districts since 1979, and six more are planned, Backus said. Permits for each car cost $30 a year and there is no provision for guest parking, he said.

In Long Beach, as in other parts of Southern California, residential homes share the same streets with apartments and condominiums, creating a worse parking crunch. Preferential parking zones are no solution to the dearth of on-street parking in those neighborhoods, according to transportation officials.

Short-Term Solution

Most transportation engineers emphasize that permit parking is only a short-term solution and say the answer to parking shortages lies in increasing the number of spaces that businesses must provide.

The Los Angeles Municipal Code requires new businesses to provide two spaces for every 1,000 square feet, said Robert Camou, transportation engineer for the City of Los Angeles. Camou said that city officials are studying the possibility of increasing the number of parking spaces required for new developments.

Despite its controversial nature, permit parking has some die-hard fans.

“Our neighborhood is back to the way it was in the good old days,” said Irving D. Hirschfield, a resident of the Fox Hills Drive area that once was jammed with cars owned by people who work in nearby Century City. The neighborhood, which is bounded by Santa Monica, Beverly Glen and Olympic boulevards, became Los Angeles’ first permit parking district in 1981.

“It took two years to get it established, but it was worth it,” Hirschfield said.

On the list of preferential parking’s detractors are residents such as Cornelia and Lawrence August, who opposed preferential parking in their Melrose Avenue neighborhood when other residents fought to establish it more than a year ago. Bounded by La Cienega and Crescent Heights boulevards, the zone was approved by the City Council and will go into effect next week.

The Augusts, a retired couple in their 70s with a large family living nearby, objected to having to pay for parking near their home and provide permits for their guests. In Los Angeles, residents can buy two annual guest permits per household for $10 each and one-day guest passes for $1 each. (In some cities, however, no guest permits are offered.)

“Maybe we’re being selfish, because I know some people can’t even find a spot, but I don’t think we should be the ones that have to pay,” Cornelia August said.

Authored Ordinance

Even Yaroslavsky, who authored the permit parking ordinance and whose district has the most districts, balked at the prospect of paying for curb-side parking. Although the councilman said he can rarely find a parking place within half a block of his West Los Angeles home, he talked his neighbors out of petitioning for permit parking.

While many residents seem less than happy to pay to park near their homes, others turn to permit parking when they feel they have no options left.

Songwriter Olsen can tell a host of horror stories about the parking problem on his block. A few weeks ago, a musician who records with him was forced to struggle up most of the block carrying a costly 70-pound computerized drum because all the spots in front of Olsen’s home were taken.

“These are older houses and our driveways are small,” Olsen said. “Cars park and think nothing of overlapping and blocking parts of our driveways. Sometimes, I’ve had to drive across my front lawn to the next door neighbor’s driveway to get out.”

Despite such hardships, city officials generally recommend that residents not jump into permit parking. In Los Angeles, they are urged to try other alternatives--like time-limited parking--before turning to permit parking, Jaramillo said.

Overstayed Welcomes

Such was the case in Olsen’s neighborhood, where two-hour parking was tried first. But employees from businesses on Lankershim Boulevard not only overstayed their welcomes, like the Mercedes owner, but quickly learned how to outwit the system.

“They definitely know the game,” Olsen said. “After two hours, they come out and move the cars around. It’s real cute.”

However, merchants worry that most of their customers will not play the game. They fear that they will lose business if parking spaces are reserved for residents.

Moustache Cafe owner Fernand Page claims that when permit parking signs go up in the Melrose Avenue area this week, he will lose 30% of the 400 customers who show up each weekend night.

“If they cannot park cars here, customers are going to get tired and are not going to come back,” Page said.

Page said he attended neighborhood meetings and fought the district, but “you’re fighting against a wall, a solid concrete wall.” He said he hopes to tear down the walls of a duplex he owns adjacent to the cafe and replace it with a parking lot.

“If the resident has the right to ask for parking on the street, then I have the right to tear down my property and build a parking lot,” Page said.

City officials walk a tightrope in their attempts to balance the interests of business owners with the concerns of residents.

“We don’t want to make it impossible for either side,” Yaroslavsky said. “In fact, we have always managed to find compromises and arrangements which work well for both residents and business.”

Compromise Plan

One of those compromises was achieved in the same Melrose Avenue district. When the signs are posted, they will allow two-hour parking on one side of the street until 10 p.m., while the other side will be restricted to residents with a permit, Jaramillo said.

Two Melrose Avenue business partners have come up with their own creative alternative to offset the loss of parking spaces. In addition to an existing valet parking service, the owners of the Improvisation Comedy Club are planning to offer patrons the use of a parking lot at nearby Fairfax High School. They will provide a shuttle service from the high school to the club at a cost of $400 to $500 a weekend night, not including insurance, co-owner Budd Friedman said.

“If our customers don’t mind the trolley ride, we’re OK,” he said.

Just a few months ago, Friedman and his partner, Mark Lonow, spearheaded the battle against the preferential parking district. But these days, Friedman said he has grown resigned to the idea’s popularity: “The people have spoken.”