@By:By Heather Rock Woods The signs said "Welcome to the Blue Zone. After 2 hour limit expires no reparking in blue zone before 5 p.m." So Larry FitzSimmons, 77, parked his car for 36 minutes in the Webster/Cowper garage while he got a haircut. In the afternoon he parked for 46 minutes on a blue zone street because he had an appointment with a chaplain to discuss the memorial service for his late wife.
His total time in the blue zone last Nov. 28 was 1 hour and 22 minutes, yet he got a $20 ticket.
What the signs should say is: Do not repark in the same zone if parking officers have captured your license plate on their hand-held computer.
"I am certain the City Council did not intend our new parking ordinance to catch someone like me," he wrote in a letter to the city contesting the ticket. FitzSimmons' ticket was dismissed, but since then, "I do feel I am not spending as much money downtown as I used to because I can't remember which zone I parked in," he said.
While FitzSimmons sees the color zone parking system as "intolerable," the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, the Palo Alto Police Department, and many merchants think the experimental system that has been in place for the past year has been very successful in freeing up downtown parking spaces for shoppers, diners and visitors.
"The hard evidence suggests it's not just working, but it's an amazing success," said Palo Alto developer Chop Keenan, chair of the chamber's Downtown Parking Committee.
That's why the parking committee will recommend at the March 4 City Council meeting that the trial system, which has been in effect since March 17, 1995, be extended for another year.
The blocks of coral, lime, blue and purple were set up to discourage the estimated 300 to 400 downtown workers, so-called "sleepers," who park their cars in timed zones and then move their cars two hours after finding a chalk mark on their tire.
Some evidence suggests the system has been working. Last March, the city experienced a surge of people applying for permits in downtown lots and garages, suggesting that some "sleepers" were moving off the street. And the city has sold more permits in the past year, although the numbers are not available yet.
While it is hard to get a firm count on the number of available parking spaces downtown, "We know there's more parking in the core," said Susan Frank, the chamber's executive director. "It's a fact, It's a reality. We don't need to study it," she said. "I believe it's been a success for what we set out to do."
And while the color-zone system is clearly more complicated, the actual number of tickets given out is down as well.
Between April and December in 1995, police wrote up 12,666 citations in the color zone area, a 19 percent drop from the 15,555 citations that were issued during that time period in 1994.
Zone supporters have speculated that the decrease reflects that people no longer need to park in risky places, like red zones, because there are more legitimate spaces. Color zones might also have made people more observant of parking regulations.
Skeptics, however, argue that the decline could be an indication that fewer people are going downtown and braving the colorful system.
At the same time, parking citations throughout the city also dropped: There were 30 percent fewer citations given between April and December in 1995 than during that time period in 1994. Police don't have an explanation for the decrease, which also occurred in other local cities, except for the rising costs of parking fines, said Assistant Police Chief Lynne Johnson.
What is certain is there have been virtually no complaints about finding parking, a lament that made up 95 percent of parking-related calls prior to color zones, Johnson said.
For a program that's so different than other cities' programs, and charged with being too complicated, "There's 97-plus percent in compliance, which tells me that most people are not confused by the system. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it," Johnson said.
The Police Department has logged more than 300 official complaint calls since March concerning the color zones, which includes people fighting the citations.
Johnson said about 40 percent of the citations issued for the color zones were dismissed. Most of those cases involve people unfamiliar with downtown.
For those who don't know, or don't understand, the color zone system works like this: Drivers are allowed to park for up to two hours in each of the zones. After parking for two hours in one zone, a driver can move to another zone, or to a 2-hour-limit slot outside of the color zones, or to unrestricted parking in a neighborhood.
The root of the problem is that there are 1,491 too few parking places for all the shoppers, workers, residents, visitors, and delivery services that come to Palo Alto's thriving downtown, according the city's 1995 Commercial Downtown Monitoring Report.
As a result, delivery trucks double park, employees repark every two hours, customers circle the block to find close, free parking, and residents of nearby neighborhoods complain that the overflow fills their on-street parking spots.
Palo Altans have decried the downtown parking problem as far back as 1920, when cars and buses were on the road replacing the trolley system. Today, there are an estimated 7,200 spaces in the commercial core, which includes 1,700 on-street spaces and 2,300 spaces in city lots.
"If you want to talk about major issues in the downtown, I'd say parking is number one," Keenan said. "At the end of the day, there's a parking deficiency in downtown, before and during color zones."
Despite the shortage, few dispute the system has made it easier to find a spot in the commercial center of town during the day.
"We believe it's important that the program go on another year," Frank said. "It's a complex program. A year's time is not enough to know. If after two years we're still in the same situation (with negative impacts), we'll see."
Frank says she hears from happy merchants as well as from merchants whose customers think the system is too complicated or unfriendly. But merchants say they don't want to go back to the previous two-hour zones, which generated numerous complaints from shoppers that there was nowhere to park.
Bob Tallman, owner of the House of Foam on the corner of Hamilton Avenue and High Street, said color zones have improved parking, but he still has customers who say it's hard to find a space. "Parking is still a problem." Tallman, who buys parking permits for his long-term employees, thinks color zones should be renewed.
Tallman's main concern with the novel system a year ago was that his customers would be ticketed for returning to pick up something the same day. It hasn't happened to Tallman's customers yet, but reparking has been one of the biggest problems with the color zone system.
Because the wording on the signs don't explicitly prohibit returning to a zone after parking for less than two hours, people like FitzSimmons, who would not have been ticketed a year ago, have been tripped up.
The parking committee isn't planning to change the wording because, in Frank's experience, most people who get reparking tickets weren't confused by the signs, but forgot what zone they parked in or were gambling they wouldn't get a ticket.
Family members who use the same car at different times in a day also have been zapped for venturing into the same zone twice. Ed and Cally Hooks share one car, and fought their second ticket. The ticket was dismissed "with a helpful suggestion that my wife and I leave notes for each other in our car . . . Give me a break," Hooks wrote in his complaint letter to City Council.
"It's a big hole in the system. I don't think it occurs to (the City Council) that there might be a family in Palo Alto with one car," Ed Hooks said. "They ought to identify in their computer the licenses of single-car families in Palo Alto."
To alleviate the reparking problem, the parking committee is proposing creating more 30-minute zones, and making them exempt from the color zones so people can park for a short time--perhaps to get coffee or pick up dry cleaning--in the morning and still return for a longer time the same day.
"Those are people who we don't want to get tickets," Frank said. "(Color zones) are for customers who need to be in the core area. Now they're penalized for coming downtown twice in a day."
Of course the parking committee is not trying to prevent downtown workers who park on the street from getting tickets.
The intent of color zones was to get workers off the street because they're "causing more of a problem rather than being part of the solution," Frank said.
That attitude bothers consultant Karen Weissman, who works in a 15-person office on Hamilton Avenue with no parking. "They call (workers) sleepers and decide to penalize them. I still completely believe that the premise behind (zone parking) is wrong. We work here and we patronize local businesses. We're not taking business away from local merchants."
Like sales representatives and delivery people, Weissman sometimes needs quick access to her car. But color zones make that difficult. Three of her co-workers have permits for the nearby Webster/Cowper garage. The rest "catch as catch can," she said. They arrive early to park in residential areas or jump zones during the day.
Perhaps the most intractable problem for the parking committee to remedy is the increased number of cars parking in the neighborhoods north and south of downtown.
The transportation department's surveys suggest an estimated 100 to 150 "sleepers" have taken refuge in the neighborhoods from the license-tracking computers of the color zones.
"It's this balloon. You squeeze here, and it's going to pop out there," said Emerson Street resident Dena Mossar, who is also a member of the parking committee and the commute coordinator for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
Even before the experiment, there were more than 1,200 non-resident cars parked at color-free residential curbs. Some of those belong to personal visitors, gardeners and service people, and residents who work different shifts. The parking committee isn't even working on parking in the commercial region south of Forest Avenue right now because the automotive and other commercial uses in close proximity with residences requires special attention, and possibly its own parking garage, Frank said.
"Parking in the neighborhoods has been an issue for a long time. Of course, people perceive as a result of color zones that it's gotten worse," said city Traffic Engineer Ashok Aggarwal.
It's a perception many residents share. To the south--where about 200 employees of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation also park on residential streets--the overflow of parked cars from the downtown core now extends past Addison Avenue to Lincoln Avenue.
In the first months of color zones, University South residents "were really up in arms," said Pat Burt, president of the University South Neighborhoods Group. "People are still frustrated by it, and the renewal will probably touch it off again, especially from Addison to Lincoln where that wave shifted."
People in Downtown North have been inundated with workers' cars for years, but noticed an increase last spring. Many residents said they couldn't tell if the jump was from color zones or from Stars restaurant, whose red-shirted valets were parking cars in the neighborhood (a practice which has apparently stopped).
"There is no question that there has been a significant increase in employee parking in front of residences in Downtown North," said City Council member Gary Fazzino, who lives in that neighborhood on Bryant Street.
Tricia Ward-Dolkas can't even get the street in front of her Everett Avenue house cleaned. She parks her car at the curb overnight, so she can give the street sweepers access in the morning, but as soon as she pulls out someone else pulls in. "It's really gotten gross in front of the house. If there were renewal of color zones, it would have to be with other measures. It's not working the way it is now," Ward-Dolkas said.
The parking committee has no direct solution, except to ask for another trial year to do more parking surveys and to show "sleepers" where else they can park.
It may be three years--when the Medical Foundation is slated to move and a parking structure is likely to be under construction--until the neighborhoods see relief.
"We're talking about a situation that has an end in sight, but it's not tomorrow," Mossar said. "We live here because we like being close to downtown. There are some negative aspects to that."
Those few who reside within the color zones face a different problem--they are held to the same restrictions as downtown workers, shoppers and visitors: stay longer than two hours in that zone and risk a ticket.
"It makes no sense," said Clare Stimson, who lives on Waverley Street in the Lime Zone. Last summer he and his wife, Suzanne, weren't allowed to park in the driveway of their rental home because of an agreement with their landlord.
The city suggested buying a permit for lots several blocks away, but that was too far for Suzanne, then pregnant, and their two children. "It's so unreasonable. There has to be something where residents can buy permits," to exempt them from the color zones, Suzanne said. In fighting their parking penalties, Clare said "everyone I've talked to thinks the law is wrong, but everyone in the law has to enforce it."
"It's not to be taken lightly, but except to buy a permit (for a city lot), there's probably no solution," Frank said.
The good news, from the parking committee's perspective, is that it seems only half of the drivers who were sleeping downtown prior to color zones rolled into the neighborhood in the last year. Where have the rest gone?
Some workers have continued to sleep--now they get more exercise because they have to move farther.
Some have bought permits for the city's 1,100 permit spaces.
There is a three- to six-month waiting list for most lots, although there is rarely a wait for a permit at the lot behind the Holiday Inn, an adjacent CalTrain lot, and the Webster/Cowper garage.
Permits cost $200 a year or $65 a quarter. The 30 spaces in the Holiday Inn lot on the far side of the railroad tracks cost $50 a year or $20 a quarter. The city also has a month-to-month arrangement for spaces in one CalTrain lot along the railroad tracks, and can sell up to 35 permits there on a quarterly basis for $20.
Workers who carpool can get free permits for city lots, and occasional carpools of two or more workers can stop at the Hamilton Avenue bus stop in front of City Hall and pick up a free one-day permit.
One-day permits are also available for $10 a day. And part-time workers can even share a transferable permit.
Frank believes that some sleepers have turned to taking the train, or buses, or biking and walking to work. But there's no direct information to back that up.
If color zones are renewed, the parking committee plans to do more outreach and education to employers and workers in the next year to explain their parking options.
"Employees were parking right in front of the store. We're trying to shift habits. We have a vital downtown, and we want to keep it that way," Frank said.
"It's not in an employer's interest to have people going out for 20 minutes three times a day. That's the education piece," said Keenan, whose downtown office has 16 parking spaces for his 16 employees.
Most downtown buildings, however, are not well equipped with parking. For about 10 years, the city has required the new buildings provide adequate parking in order to get a building permit. For small sites, where it would be difficult to create enough parking, the property owner pays the city a $17,800 fee for each deficient space. That money may not translate into added parking spaces for years, leaving employers, employees and customers without adequate parking in the meantime.
Although the parking committee volunteers spent a rainy weekend last year delivering brochures to businesses for the kickoff of the color zones, House of Foam's Tallman said he learned most of what he knows about the new parking system from talking to enforcement officers.
Downtown workers also need information. Peter Alexander and his co-workers at The Pacific Mountaineer, for example, didn't know they could buy a parking permit, so they park across the tracks, move every two hours or park "way down the street."
The color system "just made us go further away. Everybody's gotten at least a couple of tickets," Alexander said.
"If we continue with color zones, we need to do a lot more outreach," Johnson said.
"We're doing all sorts of brainstorming to at least reduce the situations that come up with color zones," Johnson said. But, "because there's still a deficit of parking, it hasn't solved the parking deficit per se."
Back up to the Table of Contents Page