Enough of this ‘safety’ fight
EDITORIAL
When it comes to their insistence that Star Park customers crossing
an access road to get to the airport terminal pose a safety and
liability hazard, we have two words for Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena
Airport officials:
Lighten up.
The Airport Authority has taken what is essentially a
self-inflicted and self-perpetuated turf war about parking and money
and tried to spin it into a public-safety issue. By contending that
Star Park customers are risking life and limb -- and the Authority’s
property liability insurance policy -- by cutting across the access
road to reach the terminal, the Authority is trying to divert
attention away from the real issue, which is that it wants people to
use the airport’s own parking, not Star Park.
Instead of taking on Star Park on its own terms by undercutting
the private operator’s parking prices -- something competitors in a
typical business battle would do -- and leaving it at that, the
airport also has used a variety of tactics to drive business into its
own lots and away from Star Park.
First, airport workers removed the crosswalk leading from Star
Park to the terminal, the single act that most readily points up the
disingenuousness of the airport’s safety argument. If it really was
concerned about safety, why not leave the crosswalk where it was?
Next, the Airport Authority ordered its police officers to
aggressively monitor the access road and issue tickets to people who
crossed there. Officers issued a slew of $90 tickets, though after
several months of complaints from some of those who were ticketed, a
judge ruled June 9 that the airport didn’t have the authority to
issue the tickets and that the so-called violators didn’t have to pay
them.
The latest bomb the airport has dropped Star Park’s way is the
installation of a fence across the section of road where the Star
Park customers were crossing, a move that also required redirecting
traffic in the airport’s traffic loop.
This all has gotten entirely out of hand. The Airport Authority
boldly asserts that pedestrians from Star Park pose a safety hazard,
yet have no data to back up the claim. The city has no record of
car-vs.-pedestrian incidents at that spot, and certainly we’d all
have heard about someone being hurt or killed there in the past
decade, what with all the attention the airport’s gotten in recent
years.
What this is about, disingenuous claims aside, is money. The
Airport Authority wants airport users to park in its lots, and is
taking whatever steps it can, legal (the fence) or illegal (the
tickets), to see that Star Park doesn’t get any of that business.
If it was a private firm, the airport’s tactics would be described
as cutthroat and unethical. Since it is a public entity, we like
Burbank Mayor Stacey Murphy’s opinion better:
“I’m disgusted,” the mayor told airport Executive Director Dios
Marrero and Commissioner Don Brown last week. “It’s disingenuous to
say this has anything to do with anything except a war over
finances.”
She’s right. The time to end this dispute is now. Since it’s a war
predominantly being waged by one side -- the airport -- we urge that
organization to do one thing about the Star Park situation:
Lighten up.