SIMI VALLEY : Council to Tackle Truck Parking Woes

Tractor-trailer drivers have to park their rigs somewhere. The residents of eastern Simi Valley just wish it were not in their neighborhood, where idle semi-trailers often line the bike lanes along Los Angeles Avenue.

On Monday, the Simi Valley City Council plans to discuss alternatives to the current parking scenario that, residents complained in a petition, makes the street by their front yards unsafe for bicyclists and ugly.

The council could ban truck parking altogether along the popular stretch of Los Angeles Avenue between Yosemite Avenue and Stearns Street. Similar bans are in effect in cities such as Moorpark, Fullerton, Santa Monica and Los Angeles, according to a city staff report.

Or council members might ask the city attorney to press enforcement of laws requiring truckers who are not making local deliveries to stick to designated truck routes.

But neither move would give truckers who live in the city a safe place to park.

So, the council also will consider renting space for a city-run truck parking lot at 75 W. Easy St., the site of a proposed truck stop that was never built.

The problem is, if not huge, at least chronic, officials said.

Between Aug. 18 and Sept. 3, Simi Valley city staff and police officers found an average of two truck trailers parked along the avenue between Stearns Street and Yosemite Avenue every day, according to staff reports. And there were seven rigs parked there on the night of Aug. 30.

While most were not parked in the same place for more than three days, there were two trailers left without tractors that sat in the same place for 17 days.