URBAN GRIPE

Instead of fantasy baseball camp, why doesn’t someone open a fantasy Congress camp, where visitors can pass their own dream legislation? The first order of business could be a Pet Peeve Act, which puts to death drivers who park oversize cars in compact-only spaces.

The trouble with compact parking, says traffic engineer Ed Cline, is that nobody has defined what a compact car is. “You could park a Lincoln Town Car in a compact space all day long and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

So why allow mini-spaces in the first place? To placate developers, who must meet city requirements for a certain number of stalls, but want to do so using as little land as possible, Cline says. In L.A., builders can shrink 40% of their parking stalls from the regular 8-foot, 8-inch width to 7 1/2 feet. Most other cities insist on more breathing room--9 feet for regular spaces and 8 1/2 for compacts, but that doesn’t prevent snafus.

For one thing, compact cars aren’t so compact anymore. The once anorexic Honda Civic is now as plump as the old Honda Accord. The Accord is now as bloated as the Ford Taurus. If present trends continue, scientists warn, all compact cars will be bigger than motor homes by 2010.

Some cities such as Lawndale and Calabasas have begun outlawing smaller stalls. And Santa Clarita restriped some existing compact spaces to full-size.

In any case, under the Pet Peeve Act, guilty parties would be tarred (with parking lot asphalt, of course) and feathered.