As just about anyone living in Westwood knows, parking in the Village is a nightmare. A parking spot in an all-day zone is a coveted commodity – students can be seen spending up to an hour babysitting their cars to make sure they can get a spot after street cleaning is over.
Anyone living in the Village has also probably noticed the area’s crowding. Driving down a relatively small street such as Landfair Avenue can be a challenge, especially at night, with students darting across the street and cars crammed into any spot possible.
Michael Dukakis, a former presidential candidate and visiting professor who spends a few short months in Westwood each year, has proposed an absurd solution: Eliminate hundreds of spots and shove hundreds of additional cars into the chaos that is Westwood Village parking.
Beginning in January, the city will begin ticketing residents for apron parking.
Apron parking is when cars park between the street and the sidewalk, not blocking the sidewalk but partially jutting into the street.
In early October, the Daily Bruin reported on the initial announcements the LAPD made to strictly enforce the prohibition of apron parking. Only recently, the city announced its plans to delay enforcement until January to give students more time to accommodate the change.
But enforcing the regulation in January is still too soon.
Though apron parking certainly does nothing to mitigate the tight Westwood streets, suddenly eliminating about 200 spots in Westwood is a terrible idea and will be problematic for hundreds of people.
Those Westwood residents who currently park this way in front of their apartments will have to modify their parking habits, and residents currently parking on the street will have even more difficulty finding a place to park.
While the elimination of apron parking may be a good idea in the long run, the city must provide a viable alternative for residents before making such a drastic change.
Apron parking has been in place for years. Westwood residents rely on it, and landlords charge extra for residents to have spots in front of their apartments.
And changing that policy suddenly, whether legal or not, is just not a good idea.
Before eliminating more than 200 parking spots, the city should provide residents with some alternatives.
One solution the city could employ to increase and improve parking in Westwood could be to convert roads to one-way streets and enforce perpendicular parking on one side. Most Westwood streets are wide enough to handle this, and perpendicular spots would make better use of the curb space in the Village.
The city could also convert parts of Westwood to permit parking, so residents could park on their own streets.
Another solution, one which would be more costly and difficult to employ, would be to build a parking garage in Westwood and sell spots to Village residents, who are more than willing to hand over large amounts of money in exchange for a guaranteed spot near their apartments.
But until some sort of alternative to apron parking is put in place to increase the number of other spots in Westwood, a change is irresponsible and will wreak havoc on Westwood car owners.