Parking Permits--Hinderance or Boon for L.A. Residents?

The specter of permit parking (Metro, Oct. 5) has chosen to rear its ugly head over our fair metropolis leaving us with a world full of options: If my neighborhood “goes permit,” I can pay anywhere from $15 to $30 to go anywhere (within a six block radius of my house) and be assured of a parking space--that is, if many neighbors, with whom I am already vying for the inadequate amount of space available, haven’t gotten home from work first.

Suppose I want lunch out today: I can find a nice one-hour meter and sneak out of the restaurant from time to time to feed it quarters. Or I can eat fast.

Perhaps the restaurant has a valet parking lot. Great! I can pay money for an opportunity to spend more money eating. Either that or park in a pay lot, because I’m not likely to find free street parking with “permit fever” sweeping the Southland.

One gets the impression that these new parking policies are a tad biased in favor of folks with cash or agoraphobics who aren’t about to go out in the first place.

Sure, San Francisco can endure permit parking: People can leave their cars behind and enjoy a public transportation system that does that city credit.

But to imagine that people now have an incentive to forsake their cars in favor of slow, smelly buses in our neck of the woods is pure foolishness.

I only regret that we can’t designate large tracts of Los Angeles as non-permit areas.

CLIFFORD J. TASNER

Los Angeles