Station Sees Valets as Key to Parking Crush

Valet parking at the jampacked Irvine Metrolink lot--an idea that caused a commuter backlash in March--is coming back next month, but with a twist.

It will be free.

And don’t call it valet parking. Assisted parking or managed parking is the label officials prefer.

It’s the city’s latest answer to easing the daily scramble for the 537 parking spaces in the lot at Barranca Parkway and Ada. The battle for space has caused short tempers and dissatisfaction among Metrolink customers for years.

Commuters also balked at paying $2 for valet parking earlier this year, bringing an end in three weeks to what was supposed to be a three-month trial.

But Public Works Director Jim Eldridge, whose department oversees the station, said, “I think this plan is going to be real good for us.”

With the assisted parking system, officials expect to squeeze another 100 cars in the existing lot by double-parking them, solving the problem less expensively than building or leasing another lot.

But some commuters Friday foresaw problems: primarily the wait when people all want their cars at once. As dozens of passengers disembarked and disappeared into their cars within three minutes, some worried that a valet system would cause a bottleneck.

“It’s a bad idea. It’s a real bad idea,” said Ed Kaiser of Lake Forest, a contracts manager for an aerospace firm in Burbank. “You’re at the mercy of other people.”

Cab driver Jeff Richards, who frequently takes fares at the station, also anticipated a crunch.

“Parking is a madhouse here. But the problem with valet parking is you have 50 to 60 people getting off the train at one time. How many valets are they going to have out here?”

Even if commuters accept the valets, the program will be short-lived. The city only needs to buy time--perhaps 15 months. By then, Metrolink will have opened stations in Tustin and Mission Viejo, which will ease the crush in Irvine, Eldridge said.

The station is the most popular stop of 10 on the 87-mile-long Orange County Metrolink line that runs from Oceanside to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, said Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo. About 900 people use the station daily, 18% of the entire ridership on the line, which serves about 5,000 people with 13 trains a day.

Officials of Irvine, which runs and maintains the station, originally planned to lease space at some nearby properties and use shuttle buses to bring commuters to the station. But they couldn’t find any land to lease.

There also was concern about the expense of that idea and whether commuters would tolerate the inconvenience of driving to the parking lot to take a shuttle bus to the station and then board a train.

“Parking attendants are cheap compared to cost of land and improvements and the shuttle,” Eldridge said.

The cost of paying attendants until January 2000, about $100,000, will be paid by a grant from the Orange County Transportation Authority. The money was earmarked for the shuttle buses, but OCTA agreed to let the city convert the grant, Eldridge said.

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My Car, Please

Valets and double-parked cars are part of a new plan to alleviate the parking squeeze at the Irvine Train Station.

Source: City of Irvine