GLENDALE : City Plans for Jump in Galleria Traffic

With the start of the holiday shopping season less than a week away, city officials have developed traffic and parking plans to ease an expected 200% increase in congestion around the Glendale Galleria.

“It’s my understanding that the amount of traffic coming and going out of the Galleria rivals that of Disneyland,” on the day after Thanksgiving, Glendale Police Lt. Ray Edey said.

“We’re talking thousands of cars in and out of there in a day,” Edey said.

An average of 150,000 shoppers have flocked to the Galleria on past Fridays following Thanksgiving, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. The mall normally draws an average of 50,000 people daily.

The expected boom in crowds is also based on a recovering economy and the shopping center’s latest store opening, the Robinsons-May store. Since its mid-October opening, the shop has already produced a 15% to 25% jump in traffic around the area, Edey said.

Beginning Friday until Christmas Day, police plan to assign eight to 12 officers to direct traffic at key intersections surrounding the mall. The officers will work between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. Most traffic and patrol officers will work either extended hours or seven-day weeks.

“Our primary goal in handling this traffic is to keep it moving,” he said.

And for the first time, city officials are expected to lengthen the timing of left-turn signals at key intersections leading to the second-largest shopping center in Southern California--topped only by the South Coast Plaza in Orange County.

The left-turn signals on traffic lights had not been in place last year, officials said.

Weekday service hours for the city’s Beeline shuttle routes that cover downtown Glendale and Glendale Community College will be extended until 10 p.m. beginning Friday. Regular hours had been from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday service will also be made available to passengers during the holiday shopping season.

Galleria officials will offer three valet parking sites and will post parking signs outside the mall on Columbus Avenue, where parking structure entrances are situated, said Cindy Chong, Glendale Galleria general manager. The number of spaces inside the two structures have been increased from 6,200 last year to 6,400.

Six crossing guards on streets inside the mall area will also be used Friday to ease pedestrian traffic, Chong said. They now work on weekends.

For Galleria and city officials, the worry from last year that won’t be repeated is another visit from President Clinton.

“It was a madhouse,” recalled Chong. “It was wall-to-wall people.”