It’s a Reality: State to Start Parking Ban Along PCH : Traffic: Despite years of opposition, Caltrans announces it will start banning afternoon rush-hour parking on the west side of PCH in Hermosa Beach in March. The plan will be re-evaluated after a year.

After 20 years of wrangling with Hermosa Beach officials, the state Department of Transportation this week said it intends to finally institute an afternoon parking ban along the west side of busy Pacific Coast Highway in March.

The move, designed to stem an ever-increasing number of rush-hour collisions on Pacific Coast Highway’s southbound lanes, will be re-evaluated by Caltrans one year after it begins.

“It’s not a question of if, it’s when” the 3 to 7 p.m. parking ban will start, Karl Berger, an associate engineer for Caltrans said Thursday.

Caltrans, he added, hopes to begin the ban as early as March 1, though the date will depend on the availability and installation of parking signs. There has been a parking ban during the morning rush hour on the east side of Pacific Coast Highway since the 1970s.

Though similar restrictions have been agreed to by other coastal cities, including Manhattan Beach, the rush-hour parking ban in Hermosa Beach has been fiercely opposed by its officials, merchants and some residents. Opening the westbound parking lane to rush-hour traffic, they say, would both devastate businesses and transform the roadway into a raceway, with cars speeding along curbs through the city.

Now, with Caltrans ready to move ahead, city officials in February hope to help the state agency decide how the ban’s effectiveness will be determined.

“It’s their jurisdiction. It’s a state highway,” said Public Works Director Anthony Antich. Before the ban takes effect, Antich will meet with Caltrans’ officials “to see if we can establish some benchmarks that are reasonable in determining how well it works,” he said.

Caltrans officials, armed with one traffic study after another, have for years argued the parking restrictions are vital to reducing an accident rate that is nearly twice as high as its experts would expect. The rate of 5.33 reported accidents per million vehicle miles--one measurement of average daily traffic safety--compares with the expected rate of 3.3 reported accidents per million vehicle miles along such a road, according to Caltrans. The statewide average is 1.5 accidents.

“If you had to drive a road that had twice the reported number of accidents as expected, wouldn’t you consider it more hazardous than it should be?” Caltrans’ Berger said.

Further, Caltrans officials contend that rush-hour parking restrictions have already proved effective along the east side of Pacific Coast Highway, where a morning ban, from 6:30 to 9 a.m., has been in place for years and the accident rate is 64% lower than the afternoon accident rate on the west side of the highway.

Finally, with traffic along Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach growing at a rate of 4.5% a year, Caltrans officials insist that rush-hour congestion and collisions will continue to climb without additional parking restrictions. At present, more than 50,000 cars travel Pacific Coast Highway daily in the city, according to Berger, who estimates that rush-hour commuters account for 90% to 95% of that traffic at peak morning and afternoon periods.

The numbers, however, fail to persuade many in Hermosa Beach, including Werner Kindor, sales manager of Vasek Polak Porsche/Audi, one of three Vasek Polak dealerships along Pacific Coast Highway.

The loss of parking to traffic during rush hour, Kindor said, will not only hurt business but create new traffic problems as cars converge in and out of the curbside lane to avoid “right turn only” intersections at Pier Avenue and 190th Street.

“The parking problem for us will be minor compared to what is going to happen with traffic,” Kindor said. “It’s going to be murder with people merging in and out of traffic.”

With the parking restrictions apparently imminent, however, Kindor said the dealership may have no choice but to provide additional off-street parking for customers during afternoon rush hour.

“It’s not only going to hurt us, but other merchants will also lose business. And it’s bad enough right now,” Kindor said.

“I think I’m going to buy myself a tow truck and wait for business.”