No-Space Station : Parking Crunch at Irvine Hub Gives Train Riders Lots of Anxiety

Chris Gleiter left his car in a two-hour parking zone for an entire day this week. Tom Philips has taken to riding a motorcycle.

And Vivian Smith parks wherever she can find a space for her car.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Smith, a Mission Viejo resident who drives to the Irvine Regional Transportation Center each morning to catch a train to her job in downtown Los Angeles. “I’m parked in a tow-away zone right now and I got here 15 minutes early!”

The three disgruntled drivers were among the hundreds of commuters and tourists somewhat bent out of shape by a critical shortage of parking that has plagued the center for nearly the past two weeks. Located near the infamous “Y” of the Santa Ana and San Diego Freeways, the facility serves as a hub for commuters who leave their cars in its lot to catch 24 daily trains to and from workplaces in Los Angeles and San Diego.

“We’ve become more and more successful,” said John Harris, principal planner for the city of Irvine and the train station’s manager. “Our station is carrying a large share of the South County demand for rail transit.”

Two weeks ago, however, it ran out of parking spaces.

The immediate cause of the problem might have been the Sept. 8 relocation of 600 Bank of America employees from a large office building in Costa Mesa to various sites in Orange and Los Angeles counties, including downtown Los Angeles. Faced with the sudden necessity of commuting from their Orange County homes to distant offices, many apparently chose to take the train.

In the long run, according to Harris, the parking crunch is the predictable result of steady growth in a station that, only five years after being built, serves more than 700 passengers a day but offers only 532 parking spaces. The situation is likely to get worse after Oct. 2 when the station becomes host to six trains in and out of Riverside.

“In a way, we’re happy that we have this kind of problem,” Harris said. “What it demonstrates is that there’s a demand for alternative forms of transportation.”

That demand became evident almost immediately after the station’s June, 1990, opening. Since 1991, use of the station has increased dramatically, Harris said. For each of the past four years, he said, the city has applied unsuccessfully for state funding to design and build a new parking garage at the site. City officials plan to apply again this year, he said.

In the meantime, Harris said, they are working on several strategies to help ease the parking congestion, including a program aimed at matching up train commuters for car pooling to and from the station, and a project providing refurbished bicycles to incoming commuters who otherwise might need rides.

None of plans have made a dent in the daily parking lot traumas experienced by almost any commuter vying for a spot on the 7:33 a.m. train.

City officials said Thursday that they are formulating a series of recommendations to relieve the overcrowding that could include shuttles, group rides with taxis, limiting parking time and setting fees for parking.

“It’s been really bad,” said Julie Coronado, who lives in Irvine and works in Los Angeles. “You can’t find any parking from 7 a.m. on.”

Most of the overflow ends up parked illegally in the aisles between the parking space rows or, like Gleiter’s car, in two-hour slots, said Mitch Thomann, the post commander in charge of security at the station. But none of the violators have been towed away, the commander said, nor does he plan to call any tow trucks.

“I’m personally not doing anything about it,” Thomann said. “If the Fire Department comes out and raises a stink, then we’ll have to deal with it. But this is a positive problem--we’re getting cars off the freeways. If this is a problem, it’s the kind I like to have.”

Thomann said that he issues written warnings to the drivers of cars illegally parked in handicapped zones, red zones or blocking other cars. Since Sept. 11, when the parking crunch began, he said, he has issued six such warnings--five more than usual during a similar period.

Out in the parking lot trenches, meanwhile, tempers flare daily as would-be riders compete for the shrinking available space.

“It’s pretty disgusting,” said Sonia Harris, a tourist waiting for a train to San Diego. “We couldn’t find anywhere to park, so we parked it in the street.”

Adrianne Moore, a visitor from Delaware, had an even more disconcerting experience during a recent excursion to Los Angeles.

After spending several minutes circling the parking lot, she and her family missed their train.

“The parking wasn’t too good,” Moore said, shaking her head ruefully while waiting for the next train. “We should have left earlier.”

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Parking at a Premium

Since 1991, train ridership from the Irvine Regional Transportation Center has tripled while parking spaces remain at a minimum:

1995 212,883*

* Through August

** Number of parking spaces: 532

** Average IRTC commuters per day: 700

Source: City of Irvine