The Truck Stops Here, and It Uses Way Too Many Spaces

Dear Street Smart:

I work in Anaheim. We have big-rig trucks that come to our building for pickups and deliveries. Almost every day several of them are parked in the middle of our parking lot, blocking half of the spaces marked for cars. They stay for more than an hour. People arriving at work can’t park there and anyone already here can’t leave.

Quite a few of us are fed up and tired of having to park in a distant part of our lot. Is it legal to block parking spaces? If we call the Anaheim police, would they do anything about this?

Jeanette Lee

La Habra

There is no law against blocking parking spaces in a privately owned parking lot.

If you call the police, says Ed Dougherty, a spokesman for the Anaheim Police Department, the first question they will ask is whether the trucks are parked there with the owner’s permission. If they are, the police will not interfere. If not, the police may issue tickets or impound the vehicles.

Dougherty suggests that you contact the owner of the parking lot before calling police. Presumably the owner could then deal with the offending drivers or their employers to reach some solution.

*

Dear Street Smart:

In most cases, the designated carpool onramp lane for the freeways is the left lane. This makes sense, as the traffic that has to stop for the meter light only has to watch the traffic to the left when it is time to go. In some cases, however--for example, the southbound entrance by Cal State Fullerton on the Orange Freeway--the carpool lane is on the right. That makes the driver who has to stop for the meter light check both right and left for traffic when he begins to get on the freeway from a dead stop. This appears to be unsafe. Why is it done?

E.D. Paul

Fullerton

Historically, engineers planning onramps count the number of cars in each lane and construct the carpool lane in the one with the most traffic. Usually, that’s the left lane because, as you suggest, the relative ease of merging onto the freeway from that lane attracts more drivers, Caltrans spokeswoman Gloria Cesena said.

Occasionally, the particular structure of a freeway interchange or specific traffic patterns at a given spot make the right lane the more traveled and, in those cases, the carpool lane has been installed there.

A study completed about five years ago at UC San Diego showed no difference between the left- and right-lane approaches in terms of safety or operation.

Nonetheless, Cesena said, Caltrans engineers recently came to the same conclusion you have: It makes more sense for the lanes to conform. Consequently, she said, all new freeways in Orange County are being built with the carpool lanes on the left side of the onramp; eventually, all older freeways will be re-striped the same way.

*

Dear Street Smart:

Traveling north on Interstate 5 at the El Toro Y, there is a truck bypass lane. Is it OK for passenger cars to use this lane?

Richard Beigel

Buena Park

Yes.

*

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.