City Panel Kills Plan to End Parking Along 7th St. : Traffic: Proposal would have added a lane for rush-hour commuters. But intense outcry from merchants, neighbors spurred a retreat.

Bowing to months of public protests and pressure, a City Council committee is prepared to drop the most controversial part of a much-criticized plan for city transportation improvements.

The committee last week voted to recommend the elimination of a proposal to remove parking along 7th Street to add another lane for rush-hour traffic.

That plan has incensed community groups and 7th Street merchants, who contend that the parking ban would hurt businesses while the increased traffic would ruin adjacent residential neighborhoods and turn the street into a cross-town freeway for Orange County commuters.

“We feel pretty good,” said Ed Buras, a merchant and one of the leaders of a highly organized drive to kill the 7th Street proposal. “We feel that for the first time in a long time, somebody is listening to us.”

The elimination of the parking proposal is just one of several changes the committee is recommending for the traffic plan, which is being returned to the city staff for revision and is scheduled to be taken up again at a Nov. 5 committee hearing.

“I think the needs of the business community on 7th Street need a better look,” remarked Councilman Les Robbins, chairman of the three-member Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He added that the issue had generated more public interest and passionate debate than any other matter to come before the council since he was elected three years ago.

“We damn near had a riot,” he said, recalling a committee meeting two weeks ago. “They came down to beat us up.”

The other revisions suggested by the committee include:

* Making improvements at the Traffic Circle a priority.

* Establishing parking districts along the length of 7th Street from Alamitos Boulevard to Park Avenue. If such districts were created, money could be raised from member merchants to pay for new parking facilities.

* Studying the possibility of creating one-way streets and cul de sacs on streets intersecting with 7th and 10th Streets, to reduce traffic in neighboring residential areas.

* Installing additional traffic signals along 7th Street and Ocean Boulevard to slow traffic along those two thoroughfares.

* Reclassifying city streets designated in the plan as “major arterials” to “minor arterials,” a move that would limit widenings and similar expansions. The exceptions would be Lakewood Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, state roads that would retain the major classification.

* Putting more pressure on the state to speed up the construction of car-pool lanes on the Long Beach segment of the San Diego Freeway.