Sales Tax Dollars Fuel Curb Repair Work at Bus Stops

Dear Street Smart:

During the last two months, I have noticed crews from the city’s Bureau of Street Maintenance working on Vineland Avenue.

They have been cutting out strips of asphalt along the curb and replacing them with concrete. They only seem to be doing this in front of bus stops.

Is there something about bus stops that makes them require a concrete base?

Esko Erik Lampela, North Hollywood

Dear Reader:

What you’ve observed is literally a case of your tax dollars at work--your sales tax dollars, to be precise.

In 1980, Los Angeles County voters boosted their sales tax by a half-cent per dollar, but the money was only to be used for public transit projects.

Most of these dollars are spent by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the MTA, for bus and passenger rail programs.

But in the mid-1980s, Los Angeles city officials discovered that some street repairs also qualified for this money.

It seems that buses, because of their weight and braking power, do a lot of damage to the asphalt close to a curb.

“There’s a safety factor involved too, because the street can get so bad that the bus can go out of control,” said Hank Ganio, a city street maintenance analyst.

To remedy this, the city removes a 4-by-100-foot piece of asphalt and replaces it with a thick slab of concrete, called a wheel pad, to support a bus’ right tires.

If the pavement is particularly bad, the concrete is installed 10 feet wide to support all the tires. Then it’s called a bus pad.

Each year, the city submits a list of crumbling corners to the MTA, which confirms that each is an active bus stop, then sends over your sales tax dollars.

During the current fiscal year, the city will get $1.65 million to install about 550 concrete pads at bus stops throughout Los Angeles, says Gregory L. Scott, a street superintendent who oversees part of this program.

And how long will it take to beef up every deteriorating bus stop in the city?

Another five years, Scott says.

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Dear Street Smart:

On the San Diego Freeway between the Valley and the South Bay area, Caltrans has set up a car-pool lane that stops and starts in different locations.

The lane is marked with a double line, so that you can’t enter and exit it at will. Unless you are thoroughly familiar with the freeway, you wouldn’t know if you should drive in this lane at all because you may not be able to legally exit at the location you desire.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to post signs marking the entrances and exits for the car-pool lane?

Lillian McCain, Northridge

Dear Reader:

You’re not the only one puzzled by the ins and outs of this new car-pool lane. Caltrans opened it before all of the appropriate signs were posted.

“It is creating confusion for some people,” says Caltrans spokesman Russell Snyder. “We do plan to add more signs on the 405.”

Generally, in urban areas such as Los Angeles, car-pool lane entry and exit points are no more than three miles apart.

Incidentally, the car-pool lanes you encountered between the Harbor Freeway and 120th Street are part of a larger plan to add such lanes to the San Diego Freeway throughout the county.

The agency has promised not to steal existing traffic lanes to give car-poolers a break. It will take space away from the shoulders and medians to create the car-pool lanes.

Within the next few months, Caltrans should begin building these car-pool lanes in the Valley between the Ventura and Golden State freeways. They are expected to open in June, 1995.

One of the San Diego Freeway’s most notorious trouble spots, the Sepulveda Pass, will be a tougher expansion project because Caltrans will have less room to work with. Nevertheless, Snyder says, Caltrans does plan to build San Diego Freeway car-pool lanes between Wilshire Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway, beginning in the year 2000.

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Dear Street Smart:

A while back, you had a letter from a reader who was bothered by a neighbor’s big recreational vehicle, which was parked on the street for an excessive length of time. You told him to call the city’s abandoned vehicles hot line.

You told him wrong. We have a neighbor across the street like this. When an officer puts a notice on his vehicle, he moves it 10 feet forward. If I try again, he moves it 10 feet back.

An officer told me there was once a city ordinance that restricted the parking of oversized vehicles. But the officer said it was voided when the gas crunch occurred and was never reinstated.

I’d like to see this law reinstated.

Ray Phillips, Studio City

Dear Reader:

Several readers have complained to Street Smart about recreational vehicles and boat trailers that are parked for extended periods on a residential street. Our advice has been to call 1-800-ABANDON, so that an officer can determine whether the vehicle has been sitting there for more than 72 hours, in violation of the law.

But as you and this column have pointed out, an owner can thwart these officers by moving the vehicle a short distance. So the issue is, can these vehicles be banned from residential streets altogether?

Robert Yates, parking administrator for the city of Los Angeles, says the law prohibits commercial vehicles over 22 feet long from parking on a predominantly residential street, unless they are providing a service.

But RVs and boat trailers are not commercial vehicles, and Yates doesn’t believe that the city could legally keep them from parking along public curbs.

“I’m not sure it’s something the city has jurisdiction over,” he says. “It’s difficult to prohibit one class of vehicle unless there are specific reasons.”

Yates can’t recall an oversized vehicle parking law that was dropped by the city when gasoline became scarce.

In Sacramento, Assemblywoman Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach) recently introduced a bill that would give cities more power to restrict parking. Roger H. Powell, her chief of staff, says it was opposed by advocates for the homeless, who argued that it would make life even more difficult for people who live in their cars.

Powell says the bill may be withdrawn soon because a recent appeals court ruling appears to support a city’s right to restrict the parking of large non-commercial vehicles.

In view of this, you may want to encourage your City Council member to seek a fresh review of the issue.

Incidentally, this column reported a few weeks back that the city’s 1-800-ABANDON line was mechanically unable to handle the large volume of calls coming in.

Yates says the problem has been corrected, and callers should no longer have trouble leaving messages. If the message machine problem persists, Yates urges readers to contact the Office of Parking Management, (213) 485-2179.