Traffic Plan for Harbor Draws Fire From Flores

Four months ago, amid growing complaints about traffic in the harbor area, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley staged a press conference alongside a busy San Pedro thoroughfare and promised residents a new traffic substation and more civilian traffic officers to enforce parking regulations and to direct traffic.

The mayor, who was joined by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, said the Port of Los Angeles--which generates much of the traffic in the neighboring communities of Wilmington and San Pedro--would help foot the bill for the beefed-up enforcement.

Flores says she came away from the press conference thinking there would be more traffic enforcement officers working full-time in the communities, especially in Wilmington, where residents have complained bitterly about illegally parked trucks and abandoned cars.

‘Somebody Sold Out’

But last week she learned that the new officers will actually spend much of their time directing traffic for the port.

“I don’t understand this whole thing,” Flores grumbled. “I think somebody sold out.”

The plan for the new traffic substation, approved last week by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, calls for eight new traffic officers to be assigned to the harbor area. Their primary duty will be to direct traffic at automobile importing operations at the port--a job that is now being handled by off-duty port police.

When they are not needed at the port, the new officers will handle community complaints. City and port officials say they are not sure how much spare time the officers will have.

The plan calls for the port to pay the officers’ salaries, but only while they work on port property. The port will be reimbursed by its tenants for this cost.

Space to be Donated

In addition, the port will donate office space and parking for the new substation, which will also be used by the five traffic enforcement officers already assigned to the harbor area, who now commute from the South Central Los Angeles office.

Flores said she feels duped.

“We didn’t have to go through this whole exercise,” the councilwoman said. “They could have done that without a press conference.”

However, city Parking Administrator Bob Yates said it has always been the city’s intention to use the new officers at the port.

He said that during negotiations between the city Department of Transportation and the Harbor Department, the city tried to persuade the port to pay for the officers’ entire salaries, but port officials insisted on paying only when the officers were working on port property.

“The original genesis of this was that the Harbor Department needed traffic control,” Yates said. “That’s where this whole thing started. There was never any secrecy about that.”

Asked whose version was correct, Bill Bicker, the mayor’s transportation coordinator, replied:

“It’s a little bit of both. There are really two issues down there. One, there is a need for movement of cars off boats coming in (to the port), and I guess they want traffic control officers to deal with that. Secondly, the harbor area, Wilmington and San Pedro, has a serious traffic problem. . . . There was an accommodation worked out to accomplish both things at the same time.”

Bicker and Yates both maintained that residents will benefit from the new substation because the traffic enforcement officers already assigned to the harbor area will no longer spend their working hours traveling from their office in South Central Los Angeles to Wilmington and San Pedro.

“Right now we are losing a good deal of time just in travel,” Yates said.

Added Bicker: “The key thing is that there will be officers down there operating out of that facility with communications, with vehicles there to do the job for Wilmington and San Pedro.”

Bicker also said the city might send additional traffic officers to the harbor area if they are needed. He said Flores’ criticism was based on “a misunderstanding,” which he said “was very unfortunate.”

The councilwoman, however, said she may ask the mayor and the city Department of Transportation to reevaluate the plan, which must be approved by the City Council.

Available Space

She said that while city officials praise the port for contributing office space at an annual cost to the Harbor Department of $16,000, there is already space available in the city’s municipal building in San Pedro. However, Bicker said the Harbor Department office space is more suitable.

And, Flores complained, she thought the Harbor Department would help pay for the substation because it generates traffic in Wilmington and San Pedro, not because it needs traffic control services.

But port Operations Director Ron Kennedy said he viewed the arrangement this way: “All we’re doing is contracting for a service.”

In a report to the harbor commissioners, Kennedy portrayed the proposal as the answer to increasing difficulties the port is having in controlling traffic at its automobile importing operations, where hundreds of cars must be moved across public streets on port property to storage and processing areas.

Kennedy has estimated that the port needs an average of eight traffic control officers four days a week.

He stressed that this does not mean the port will use eight officers four days a week, saying the more likely scenario is that the port will need just a few officers on some days and more than eight on others.

On days when the port needs more than eight officers, Kennedy said, he expects the city to provide them from outside the harbor area.