Traffic and parking head my “Things the city has totally screwed up” list.
The good people in Transportation Management have brainstormed a solution. A staff information item (available online) dated May 11, 2005, and headed for City Council June 14, suggests the “Creation of a Limited and Targeted On Street Parking Program for Employees of Businesses Adjacent to Preferential Parking Zones Along Montana Avenue, Pico Boulevard and Ocean Park Boulevard Commercial Corridors.”
This latest example of “problem solving the Santa Monica way” just might end everyone’s preferential parking.
For nearly three decades, the city has created a slew of preferential parking zones (PPZs) (permit parking) designed to give residents relief when it comes to parking in front of or near homes on parked-up streets. Today, approximately 75 percent of the city’s streets have restrictions.
Some PPZs allow only residents with permits to park 24 hours a day. Others also provide for one or two hours of visitor parking. Violators are cited with fines averaging $48 per infraction.
PPZs, coupled with long-standing zoning policies prohibiting developers from building adequate parking for employees, have brought about a citywide parking shortage crisis. Now, parking-deprived local businesses are demanding access to restricted residential streets for their employees.
City staff members contend many residential PPZs are only fractionally parked up — with as high as 70 percent of parking space empty during business hours. They contend that selling a limited number of daytime non-resident or “employee” permits by lottery — such as 10 percent of the space — would allow lucky employees to park on “less than 50 percent occupied” residential streets.
For example, the 800 block of 16th Street has 41 parking spaces. Under the proposal, the city would sell four employee parking permits for that block. In the entire Montana Avenue PPZ area, to accommodate some of more than 400 employee cars currently parked on neighborhood streets, a maximum of 106 nonresident permits could be sold. Today, only half of Montana area’s streets have restrictions, so 52 non-resident permits would be issued, initially.
Opening up 10 percent of the some 345 restricted spaces around the Ocean Park Boulevard area between 16th and 19th Streets would provide parking for 35 employees. In the Pico area PPZ between 20th and 23rd Streets, 25 of 250 spaces could be available. In the East Pico area, between Pearl Street and Pico, 34 employee permits could be sold within the 340 spaces. Additional areas are also earmarked for non-resident permits.
Because streets in the Mid-City area, near the Third Street Promenade and in the Ocean Park area are already near capacity, these neighborhoods are not being considered for non-resident parking — at this time.
There are some serious flaws with this proposal. Although permits will be issued specifically block by block, present parking enforcement of our Montana adjacent two-hour zone is now so infrequent that it boggles the mind to think that parking enforcers are going to personally check permits two or three times a day.
What’s to stop City Hall from expanding the program to other PPZs? Or, to increase the percentages? The possibilities for abuse are endless.
There’s a more ominous threat, and that’s the loss of preferential parking altogether. The law clearly states and the courts have upheld that preferential zones may ONLY be established to relieve the incursion of non-resident parking in residential neighborhoods. Now, isn’t the city saying non-resident parking is OK in residential neighborhoods and we’ll even issue permits to let it happen? Isn’t this kind of like talking out of both sides of your mouth?
I’ll bet the family Buick that within hours of this being green-lighted, someone will file suit to overturn all the city’s PPZs. There might even be a petition to the California Coastal Commission to rescind long-standing approval of resident parking protections in the coastal zone because of non-resident exceptions.
It gets worse. By allowing only residents and employees to park in restricted areas, the city is clearly discriminating against students. How long will it be before Santa Monica College, the Associated Students of SMC or the school district also file to overturn the entire preferential parking system?
This scheme is wholly discriminatory and unfair. It’s another ill-conceived, “finger-in-the-dike” measure that does nothing to solve parking problems and could further exacerbate them.
And, the slipshod work continues. Underparked permit areas, such as the mostly empty blocks near San Vicente Boulevard and 26th Street, have been omitted. Why?
City Council needs to “round file” this proposal — and fast. But, I’ll bet that old political debts will be paid off and the days of exclusive, residential parking will be in jeopardy.
That’s unless the public gets involved and tells City Hall, “Hands off our preferential parking!” (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 6, 2005. Read the original PDF.