Parking Shortage at College Creates Lots of Aggravation : “We have had a reputation of having the worst parking problem in the state.”

At Pasadena City College, the hunt for parking has taken on Darwinian proportions:

Call it survival of the earliest.

At PCC, an estimated 28,000 students must compete for only 1,600 spaces, turning the school’s $20-a-semester parking permit into what Chief of Campus Police Phil Mullendore describes as a “hunting license.”

“We have had a reputation of having the worst parking problem in the state,” Mullendore said.

A rapidly growing student population and the ongoing construction of a new parking structure--which has shut down one lot and a chunk of a second--are pushing the situation toward critical mass.

All of which was painfully evident one recent morning to Antonio Zarco.

For 45 minutes and countless sweeps of parking lot B, Zarco had been searching for a parking spot--any spot. Anxious to get to class, he spotted a solution in the form of another student on foot.

Slamming the brakes on his Toyota truck, he shouted out of the car window and begged for someone, anyone, to hop in his car for a second so he could take advantage of the school’s car-pool lot.

He had recently called it quits with his girlfriend, leaving him with no love life and, more important, no warm body to help him gain access to the car-pool parking area. “We broke up and now it’s really hard to get to school on time,” Zarco said. “Unless you’re

dating someone, it’s really hard to park.”

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Even finding a spot in the car-pool lot isn’t an easy task in this little corner of parking hell. This is where the “survival of the earliest” notion comes in.

“We have a 10 a.m. class and we try to get here at 7:30,” said Mercy Plascencia, a student who had car-pooled with her sister and another friend. “We stay from 8 to 10 in the cafeteria, because if we come any later, we just can’t get any parking,” she said.

The cars begin creeping down Colorado Boulevard as early as 6:30 a.m., as groggy students attempt to scope out one of the few spots along the busy thoroughfare. When all else fails, many find their way down the city’s tidy, bungalow-lined residential streets--the long walk or threat of a ticket be damned.

“I don’t even try to get in a lot. It’s no use,” said Nancy Mogollon, a health management major who had parked her car several blocks away on Walnut Street. While the choice of parking spots typically tacks on 10 minutes to her classroom arrival time, she said it’s easier than circling the parking lots or being accosted by students looking for escorts to the car-pool lot.

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For some time, residents of the usually tranquil, tree-lined streets around the campus were less than thrilled with the student invasion that clogged roads, created noise pollution and often blocked driveways. So many lodged complaints, in fact, that the city of Pasadena took action with what is known as the Preferential Parking Program.

The program, currently in effect on 27 residential blocks, mostly south of the campus, allots a 50/50 share of parking for residents and students with permits on at least one side of the street. As the plan now stands, parking will shift to residents only in January, when the new structure at the college is completed, creating 2,000 new spaces for the students.

“I see a lot of traffic--and I’d like to see less,” said Sierra Bonita Avenue resident Marco Bonifaz. But on the flip side, “I have three friends that go to Pasadena City College, and I let them park in my driveway,” he said. Even with the permit program on many of the streets, Bonifaz often sees cars being towed from the area, a result of commuters without permits attempting to score the ever-elusive parking spot. And when the neighborhood streets and school spaces fill up, some are compelled to seek out customer parking at fast-food joints and area strip malls, an act that usually results in a stern warning or a ticket.

Patrick Sanchez, 21, has been dropped from a class for being late because, he said, he used his “no parking place” excuse too many times for his professor to believe. To avoid suffering the same fate in other classes, he risked parking in a nearby lot reserved for customers of a strip mall. The result: two parking tickets that are still unpaid.

“They are only $25 each,” he said of the tickets, “but I don’t have a job right now and I’m not about to ask my parents.”

Plus, he adds defensively: “I needed to park.”

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To be sure, other local colleges have parking problems, too. Across town at USC, security officers at the University Village shopping complex have taken to videotaping students who masquerade as shoppers for the sake of snagging a parking space. When the students return from campus, they find their cars towed and their plausible deniability gone. After all, the camera doesn’t lie.

In Pasadena, some merchants have decided to cash in on the parking crisis rather than fight it. At the Burger King on Colorado Boulevard and Bonnie Avenue, directly west of the campus, students can park all day for a mere $2--if they arrive in time to secure a spot.

“It’s a unique situation. We have to control the parking, and that’s how we do it,” said Martin Rooney, assistant manager of the eatery. But even that solution has its downside. A Whopper does not a parking permit make.

One student who was curbed by restaurant management for eating lunch and then heading to school for an hour and a half threatened to call a lawyer over his right to park after eating. Rules are rules, Rooney told him. “I told him that the parking limit for the dining room is 30 minutes,” Rooney said.