Beach Parking Issue

Thomas K. Arnold’s opinion article on pay parking at the beach showed him to be sadly uninformed on the topic (“Forces for Pay Parking at Beach Have Heads in the Sand,” Dec. 11). Not only is his article riddled with factual errors, but his logic is flawed.

He blasts the Mission Beach Town Council as racists forcing their opinions on an unwilling City Council. In actual fact, the pay parking proposal the Mission Beach Town council has voted to endorse was originated in the “Mission Beach Congested Traffic Study” prepared by JHK & Associates. This $25,000 study for the Metropolitan Transit District Board was paid for by the city out of funds collected from the developers of Belmont Park. City officials have requested town councils in affected areas to comment on the study.

Pay parking is advocated in the study to fund more public transportation to the beach (unlike state beach pay parking where none of the money has been used to provide alternatives to driving to the beach.) There is plenty of room for more people on the sand in Mission Beach, but there is no place for more people to park their cars. Thus, pay parking will ultimately make it possible for more people, including the poor, to come to the beach through the use of public transportation.

Pay parking can also fund electronic signs informing visitors on reducing cruising (meaning driving around for the fun of it, not looking for a parking place.) Cruising is fostered by free passage and an audience for the cruisers to show off to. When the parking lots are full, the attendant will not let any more cars in, so cruising will at that moment be impossible. As Mr. Arnold points out, this will be most of the time on summer weekends. Without anyone cruising, hanging out in the parking lots will lose its appeal. Thus, people who want to be part of the cruising scene will go elsewhere, freeing up more parking for people who actually want to go to the beach.

Cruising is not merely an irritant at the beach. It represents a serious safety hazard. Fire officials have stated that, if a fire occurred during the increasingly frequent gridlocked traffic jams, all of Southern Mission Beach could burn down, leaving 4,000 people homeless. There has already been an incident where paramedics had to abandon their vehicle by Belmont Park, take only a fraction of their medical equipment, and run the length of Mission Boulevard in an emergency. If nothing is done, soon the sad day will come when a Mission Beach heart attack victim, resident or visitor, dies as the result of a traffic jam.

Mr. Arnold says the Mission Beach Town Council action is a racist reaction to the sudden arrival of blacks at the beach. For many, many years there have been people of all races using the beach without any racial incidents. What is new at the beach is the presence of gangs. Mr. Arnold points out that there have been few gang arrests in the parking lots. Nevertheless, there have been serious incidents involving gangs without arrests including a gang rumble with automatic weapons fired right outside the crowded Pennant and Beachcomber.

Mr. Arnold says for some people a $3 parking fee would be a lot of money. Mr. Arnold, for some people, owning a car costs a lot of money, and they would like public transportation to the beach. The city funded study says let’s pay for it with pay parking at the beach, and, responsibly, the Mission Beach Town Council has agreed.

THOMAS WRIGHT

San Diego