No New Preferential Parking Expected in Coastal Zone

By Teresa Rochester

As Santa Monica continues to blanket its streets with preferential parking zones, neighborhoods along the city's popular coast are likely to find their efforts to restrict parking rebuffed.

City officials say they don't expect to approve any more preferential parking zones in the Coastal Zone, which runs from Lincoln Boulevard to the ocean south of Pico Boulevard and from Fourth Street to the ocean north of Pico.

Instead, Planning Director Suzanne Frick said her department is working with residents to find other means to alleviate parking crunches in that area, which is a popular destination, particularly in the summer.

"We've been in communication with residents in those areas (to tell them) that it would be unlikely that we could approve" any more preferential parking zones, Frick said. "We're looking at alternatives…We're not dismissing options."

Residents in Coastal Zone areas without preferential parking who can prove there is a dearth of parking on their street and can gather the requisite resident signatures may have to settle for alternatives such as diagonal stripping, which increases the number of spaces on the street, Frick said.

The issue of preferential parking zones resurfaced at last week's California Coastal Commission hearing on the Downtown Transit Mall, which is in the Coastal Zone. The area will lose 12 parking spaces when the mall is built, which upset commission president Sara Wan, according to Frick.

Wan, an adamant foe of preferential parking zones, cautioned City representatives that they'd better not show up before the Commission in the future seeking approval of restricted parking zones within the Coastal Zone, because they would not be granted, Frick said.

One of the powerful commission's mandates is to ensure access to the state's coastal region. As a result, the commission must approve any preferential parking zones within the Coastal Zone.

Frick said she told the Commission that the City doesn't have any "plans bringing forth any preferential parking zones in the coastal zone."

Currently the only preferential parking zone in the Coastal Zone north of Wilshire Boulevard is on Adelaide Drive, at the city's far northern edge.

Like the rest of the Santa Monica, most of the neighborhoods south of Wilshire have restrictions governing when and whom may park on City streets and for how long.

This isn't the first time the City and the Coastal Commission have butted heads over preferential parking in the Coastal Zone.