Handicapped Parking at Airport a Casualty of Gulf War

Dear Street Smart:

On a recent trip to John Wayne Airport, I discovered that every handicapped parking place was cordoned off. I was able to find a fairly close spot but was forced to walk across the parking lot and back again with my 5-year-old. While this is an inconvenience for a healthy person, for me it can be life-threatening.

Why were there no signs informing disabled drivers about the situation? Why was no alternative area designated for disabled parking? How long will this situation persist?

Nancy G. Moses, Irvine

You were a casualty of sorts of the Persian Gulf War.

With heightened security at airports across the country, regular handicapped parking spaces near the side entrances to John Wayne Airport were roped off. The measure was ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration to create a buffer around airports in case of terrorist car bombs.

For now, the restrictions remain in effect, although officials at John Wayne Airport last week sent a letter to the FAA asking that they be lifted.

“We certainly hope it’s not too much longer,” said Courtney Wiercioch, an airport spokeswoman. “These security measures will cause some inconveniences, but we’re doing our best to minimize them.”

When the handicapped spots were roped off, airport officials set aside additional parking slots for the disabled in the A-2 and B-2 parking lots located east of the terminal. People parking there have a walk of about 100 feet and cross the main airport feeder street to reach the terminal.

Wiercioch said she did not know if signs had been erected advising handicapped motorists about the altered parking situation. But employees in the various structures had been notified of the changes in case they were asked, she said.

If indeed no signs were ever posted, it seems an unfortunate oversight. Motorists won’t know by osmosis that handicapped parking is located in other structures, and I suspect that few would bother to inquire with parking attendants located at the exit booths.

Let’s hope that airport officials can find time to erect some signs advising motorists where handicapped parking can be found. Even something rudimentary stenciled on a piece of plywood or cardboard and tacked up at the entrance to a lot would prove helpful.

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Dear Street Smart:

I’d like to bring to your attention a source of great concern, and potential danger, in South Orange County.

Every morning, starting around 7, members of my bicycle club meet at my shop in Laguna Hills for our morning training rides. We regularly take the Los Alisos bike trail from Laguna Hills, near my shop, to Cook’s Corner on El Toro Road and back. It is a 21-mile loop and provides an invigorating way to start the day. Most of it is off the road, thanks to the bike trail and old El Toro Road.

The problem is this: For the past six months or so, part of the Los Alisos bike trail has been torn up because of the building of a small golf course along Los Alisos Boulevard between Muirlands Boulevard and Jeronimo Road.

The golf course was completed several months ago, but the bike trail has not been reinstalled. This causes our group and many other morning bike riders, not to mention schoolchildren, to dump onto busy Los Alisos Boulevard, Muirlands Boulevard and Jeronimo Road at the height of rush hour in order to pick up the bike trail where it starts anew, just after Manera Park at Jeronimo Road.

Several times, riders in our group have almost been hit by cars when we’ve dumped out onto the road. I have seen other riders suffer similarly close calls.

My question: Why hasn’t the bike trail, a paved one, been reinstalled around the golf course so we can stay out of traffic? If this was a designated county bike trail, who is responsible for rebuilding it around the golf course? The county? The developer?

It is just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt because of this. I can only hope that something is done before someone gets killed.

Marcel Calborn, Laguna Hills

County officials say the path should be back in a matter of weeks.

The delay resulted from a last-minute design change and a slight tussle over who would pay for it.

Robert Fischer, the county’s director of harbors, beaches and parks, said county officials determined “late in the game” that the path needed to be redesigned to include some drainage pipes running beneath a section of the asphalt.

The original design called for no drainage pipes. But the county’s flood-control engineers eventually saw the plans and advised authorities that the path could have problems without the pipes, which will keep rain runoff from cascading across the bike trail.

“Basically, we came upon something that we didn’t anticipate,” Fischer said.

Although the golf course builders were supposed to pay the entire tab for the path’s construction, they balked at the last-minute inclusion of the cost of the drainage pipes. Negotiations ensued between the golf course builders and the county, and it was agreed that the county would pick up between $14,000 and $18,000 of the extra work.

“The solution is in sight,” Fischer said. “I realize it’s an inconvenience, but that’s the case with any construction project. It’s just one of the realities of life.”

In the meantime, let’s hope no bicyclists are hurt being diverted onto the street.

Dear Street Smart:

I sit here in awe of your reply to the March 4 letter about radar trailers parking in bike lanes and the consequent danger to bicyclists. Or perhaps it is in dread, because your logic and attitude toward bicyclists reflect that of the police departments involved: There are roads where drivers go so fast that we must make extraordinary efforts to slow them down, even if the method forces bicyclists into dangerously fast traffic peppered with drivers distracted by a radar sign.

Your solution: to use orange traffic cones “so bikes have a safe path around.” Right. I have yet to hear a credible story about a car bouncing off a traffic cone, but there are plenty about cones and bicyclists bouncing off cars. You also advised that “bicyclists should always keep their heads up to watch out for obstacles such as the radar trailer.” Yeah, those pesky bicyclists are always getting themselves into trouble.

Get smart, Street Smart. I can think of at least four other solutions to the problem:

1) Use traffic officers to write tickets to slow down speeders. (What a novel idea!)

2) Suspend a radar sign out over the road. (A relatively simple engineering problem. We even do it with traffic lights.)

3) Park the trailer off the road entirely. (Gosh, and I thought of it all by myself!)

4) On a par with your solution, just put the trailer in the right-hand traffic lane. Bicyclists can remain safely in their lane; the miscreant speeders will be forced to do something about their speed. (Sure, give them traffic cones to guide them into the left-hand lane.)

The accountant types will raise their hue and cry about solutions No. 1 and 2, but compare engineering or salary costs to the cost of a single lawsuit filed on behalf of a bicyclist maimed or killed in the pursuit of slower traffic. The human tragedy, of course, simply does not compute.

Realistically, the third solution is simplest. It requires nothing more than pulling a trailer up and over a curb. If there truly is no room, the place is probably too dangerous for any driver distractions. Or are they worried more about the grass than bicyclists?

I must admit, however, that the last solution is my personal favorite.

Gary Belford, Irvine

Some, uh, interesting solutions, certainly worthy of note.

It seems to me that police already perform the service espoused by solution No. 1--writing traffic tickets--quite nicely. I’ve even got a few to show for it.

Solution No. 2--the great radar-screen suspension trick--is a real doozy. God forbid you give the police any ideas.

I, too, like solution No. 3--parking the trailer off the street. Even pulling the rig halfway off would make some room in the bike lane. Maybe the cops are reading this.

Solution No. 4--putting the radar trailer in the slow lane--just makes too much sense. Better yet, let’s put two radar trailers out there, one in each lane. That will really slow down those darn cars, and the bike lane won’t be affected at all.

Funny thing, though. I found out that in most Orange County cities it’s legal to park in a bike lane unless signs are posted specifically prohibiting it. Those cursed radar trailers are about the same width as a car, and they certainly do more to slow down traffic--and make it safer for bicyclists--than a Studebaker parked in your path.