Glendale to Issue Parking Passes Around College

In a pilot program to reduce traffic and parking congestion on residential streets, city officials this week are distributing parking passes to about 1,500 households in neighborhoods surrounding Glendale Community College.

The program, the first of its kind in the city, goes into effect Nov. 29. It is designed to force hundreds of students who have been parking on residential streets for free to use fee-charging lots on campus and nearby public lots instead.

Students and others who ignore the parking restrictions face fines of $25 per day.

Residents of the neighborhood around the campus have complained for years that students occupy all the parking space in their neighborhoods, frequently block driveways and discard trash on front lawns.

The new rules will restrict parking on dozens of streets to vehicles displaying an official city parking decal or temporary parking pass. The restrictions will apply to about 1,700 street spaces and may be expanded into additional neighborhoods at the request of residents, officials said.

Residents can purchase permits for $6 per year to park their own vehicles on the street rather than in a garage or driveway. In addition, each household is eligible for two free parking passes to be used by gardeners, guests and other visitors. Additional passes may be obtained to accommodate guests for special events, said George Miller, city public works director.

The restrictions will apply on school days only--from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays. There will be no restrictions on Friday nights, weekends and holidays, when parties and other residential events usually occur, Miller said.

Letters mailed to hundreds of households last week warning of the restrictions have triggered a deluge of visitors to City Hall in search of the passes, said City Clerk Aileen B. Boyle. Two workers from the city traffic and transportation division, as well as temporary clerks, have been assigned to issue the permits.

For years, cities have had restricted parking zones that limit visitors to one or two hours at a particular location, usually near business districts, schools and other high-traffic areas. Glendale has established about 80 such zones since it began posting restrictions in 1981.

The pilot program around the college, however, is the first in Glendale to prohibit all street parking without a permit. If successful, it could be expanded throughout the city after the first of the year, said Jennifer Jenkins, a city traffic engineer assistant.

Officials of other cities with similar programs say the permit zones, which virtually ban strangers from neighborhoods, are becoming as prestigious and popular as gate-guarded communities. Restricted zones have been established in recent years in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Ana and Ontario, among others.

Such zones in Santa Ana, for example, launched in 1987, are “expanding by leaps and bounds,” said Ruth Smith, a Santa Ana transportation engineer. She said the zones are most often sought by residents of single-family-home neighborhoods that abut areas with a high apartment population.

Smith said residents complain that apartment dwellers and their visitors frequently “change the oil and work on their cars in the streets and leave trash that makes a neighborhood look bad.”

Although permits to use restricted zones in Santa Ana had been issued without charge until now, in December the city will begin imposing an annual $20 fee per household for a maximum of three residential permits plus a pad of 25 one-day guest passes, Smith said. Additional guest passes may be purchased for $5 per pad. The limit on the number of permits issued is designed “to keep over-parking down,” Smith said.

Several years ago, Glendale officials discussed a variety of proposals to restrict street parking but dropped the idea due to widespread community opposition. However, planning officials said the pilot program now may be more palatable to residents fed up with battling traffic congestion in their neighborhoods.

Mike Southerland, chief of security at the college, said the new restrictions are expected to force students to either pay a $40 fee per semester for a parking permit or use metered lots that charge 50 cents an hour.

The fees are needed to repay bonds issued jointly by the city and the college to pay for $5.9 million in parking improvements on and around the campus, including a 750-space student lot to be completed in December.

The college, which has an enrollment of 14,500, needs to sell about 8,000 parking permits per semester to meet loan payments, said William F. Taylor, director of business services. So far this semester, only about half that number have been sold. Last week, the campus began offering the permits at a discounted $10 rate for the remainder of the semester, which ends Dec. 15, but has had few takers.

Art Diaz, a 21-year-old business major who said he patrols residential neighborhoods for about 20 minutes daily in search of free parking, complained that he can’t afford a parking permit.

Besides, Diaz argued, the new student lot--nicknamed Cardiac Hill because of its location at the top of a steep flight of stairs on the mountainside campus--will not be ready until several weeks after the city imposes new residential parking restrictions.

“I really don’t know what I am going to do,” Diaz said.

Southerland, however, said that a survey last week indicated sufficient spaces are available on campus and at city lots to accommodate most drivers who will be ousted from the neighborhoods. Parking “should be no more of a crunch than it is right now,” Southerland said.

“Kids just aren’t taking advantage of spaces in parking lots. Meters cost money and they would rather park off street for free.”