SUV Surge Driving Out Small Parking Slots

Move over. Here come more of those hulking behemoths, roaring down the road with names as big as all outdoors: Yukon, Tundra and Sequoia.

Sport utility vehicles are growing in size and popularity, taking up a bigger share of the automobile market, and a bigger chunk of America’s roadways and parking lots.

Consider the mother of all SUVs: the Ford Excursion. It weighs 3.5 tons, seats nine and is 19 feet long. The rotund roadster can barely fit into a standard space. Squeezing an Excursion into a “compact” space would be like ramming a rhinoceros into a phone booth.

To accommodate the bigger vehicles, including all those minivans and pickup trucks, several local cities have eliminated the compact parking space requirements that were adopted when driving small, gas-efficient cars was all the rage.

Compact parking spaces are about a foot and a half narrower and 5 feet shorter than standard spaces. In some cities, developers are allowed to use compact spaces for up to 40% of all parking stalls.

But in cities such as Santa Clarita, Riverside and Westminster, small spaces are out; big stalls are in. Developers of new parking lots and garages there are no longer allowed to build the smaller spaces.

A proposal to make compact spaces roomier in unincorporated Los Angeles County awaits a decision by the Board of Supervisors.

One Los Angeles city lawmaker said he also is considering changing the parking requirements to accommodate the bigger vehicles.

“Even if they drive SUVs, people are parking in these compact spaces,” said Councilman Hal Bernson. “It’s a problem.”

It’s a problem that is growing with the popularity of SUVs.

Sport utilities represent nearly 25% of all new vehicle sales. Over the next two years, the number of SUV models is expected to jump from 67 to 85, say J.D. Power and Associates auto industry analysts.

For the most part, the municipalities that mandate larger parking spaces have not cut back on the overall number of stalls they require for housing and commercial projects. The new rules simply mean that developers must build bigger parking lots and garages.

But many developers are content to build the larger lots to serve the needs of big-car drivers.

“Most companies don’t want to build compact spaces anymore,” said William Hurrell, vice president of Wilbur Smith Associates, an international engineering firm. “You hardly ever see anyone [adding] compact spaces anymore.”

As expected, SUV drivers love that many cities are eliminating compact parking stalls. They say they are tired of cramming their beloved vehicles into tight spots only to have adjacent vehicles leave dings on their shiny door panels.

“It takes too long to find a big space,” said UCLA student Jasmine Malek, explaining why she parked her hefty Ford Explorer in a compact space at the Westside Pavilion mall. “If I see a space, I take it.”

But the trend is not limited to Southern California. Throughout the state, 35 cities prohibit compact spaces in new developments, a study of 160 California cities by International Parking Design Inc., a Sherman Oaks-based architectural firm, found.

The most common compact spaces are 71/2 or 8 feet wide and about 15 to 17 feet long. But a space like that would be a tight fit for the Ford Excursion: It could squeeze in with only 6 inches to spare on either side, and with the back end hanging out by 4 feet.

Parking designers say many cities are replacing compact spaces with roomier, one-size-fits-all spaces. Glendale, for example, allows developers to install only a universal-sized stall that is 81/2 feet wide and 18 feet long.

Who has the roomiest stalls in the state? Bell Gardens, Cerritos, Lawndale, Rialto and San Marcos ban compact spaces in new projects, allowing only standard spaces that are 9 feet wide and 20 feet long, according to the International Parking Design study.

The city of Davis in Northern California can be considered the most unaccommodating community to the SUV driver. Davis parking standards allow developers to build nothing but compact spaces, measuring 71/2 feet wide by 16 feet long.

Mike Webb, a spokesman for the Davis Building and Safety Department, said the trend of massive SUVs has yet to hit that college town, so the need for bigger parking spaces has never been raised.

“In Davis, we probably do see more compact cars than not,” he said. “A lot of vehicles in town are smaller, student cars.”

A measure pending a decision by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors would increase the compact space dimensions from 8 feet wide to 81/2 feet. The measure also would reduce the allowable percentage of compact spaces from 40% to 25% in new commercial developments. The measure has been endorsed by the county Regional Planning Commission.

Not everyone likes the idea, however. Environmentalists and mass-transit advocates say municipalities that widen parking spaces are only indulging an environmentally destructive trend: a love affair with gas-guzzling vehicles.

Martin Schlageter, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the trend toward bigger parking spaces is counterproductive because it takes up more valuable land and supports practices that harm the environment.

Another drawback to the trend of bigger spaces is that the big-vehicle craze could just as quickly shift back to compact cars with a spike in gasoline prices or a downturn in the economy.

“The mix of automobiles changes from year to year,” said Con Howe, director of planning for the city of Los Angeles.

Whatever the future car craze, Leslie Wolff of Los Angeles loves her beefy Jeep Grand Cherokee.

On a recent morning, she pulled into a West Los Angeles parking lot to stop at a frozen yogurt shop. All the standard-sized spaces in the lot were taken. Only a few compact spaces remained. So she crammed her SUV into a compact stall.

Wolff admitted that motorists have yelled at her for such a move, but she said she doesn’t have time to circle the neighborhood in search of a roomier stall.

“I think they just have to make the spaces bigger,” she said. “If they were all bigger, everyone would get more space, including the small cars.”

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*--* How Cities Handle Parking The following Southern California cities prohibit “compact” parking spaces in new developments: Anaheim Newport Beach Bell Gardens Orange Calabasas Rancho Cucamonga Cerritos Rialto Dana Point Riverside Downey San Bernardino Fontana San Marcos Fountain Valley Santa Ana Glendale Santa Clarita Lawndale Simi Valley Long Beach Westlake Village Monrovia Westminster Montebello

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The most accommodating parking stalls:

In addition to prohibiting compact spaces in new developments, these cities allow only standard spaces that are 9 feet wide and 20 feet long:

*--* Bell Gardens Rialto Cerritos San Marcos Lawndale

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Source: International Parking Design Inc.