Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Free Ride Ending for Meter Violators : Parking: Councilman Holden instructs officers to resume issuing citations. Quake had halted enforcement, costing L.A. $100,000 a day in revenue.

Start saving your quarters, dimes and nickels to feed the parking meters again. The suspension of some Los Angeles city parking laws that followed last week’s earthquake is over.

Yes, for a brief week and a half, frazzled and shaken Angelenos could at least rest easy in the knowledge that parking enforcement officers would not issue citations for cars parked at expired meters.

The laws were “suspended by Mother Nature,” said Robert Yates, general manager of the city’s Department of Transportation.

But City Councilman Nate Holden has overruled Mother Nature by instructing parking officials Wednesday to go back to regular enforcement, except in areas around shelters, disaster application centers and collapsed parking structures.

“If you do the crime, you should do the time,” said Holden, chairman of the City Council’s transportation committee.

After last week’s shaker, parking enforcement officers halted most parking citation duties to focus on traffic control at those intersections where traffic signals had been knocked out of service, reducing the number of tickets issued by about 70%, Gates said.

“It’s not that we suspended (parking enforcement); it’s that we didn’t have the people to do it,” he said.

But it wasn’t roadway anarchy in the streets of Los Angeles. The most essential laws were still enforced, including rules against parking by fire hydrants and at curb spaces that are needed to make room for peak-hour traffic lanes on such roads as Olympic, Pico and Sunset boulevards.

The reprieve came to motorists who parked on metered spaces and at curbs that set parking limits to allow for street sweeping.

The number of parking tickets issued by the city dropped from about 10,000 on an average day to about 3,000 daily after the quake, Yates said. That amounts to a loss of about $100,000 in daily revenue for the city.

It’s the drop in revenue that prompted Holden to take action.

“That is the revenue we need to balance the budget,” he said. “If you put money in the meters, we get it. If you don’t put money in the meters, we don’t get it.”

Beginning in the next few days, Holden said the city will install signs to designate areas where parking enforcement has been lifted.