Images via Google Maps. Proposed bill would affect streets pictured above, sans 62nd Place.
2:30pm Tuesday | Some residents of the upscale Peninsula neighborhood of Long Beach have literally had laws rewritten to allow them to park on their side of two-way residential streets, where it can be difficult to maneuver while parking. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved AB 2067 Monday after it had been introduced by Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal a few weeks ago.
Lowenthal submitted a similar bill that Schwarzenegger vetoed last year. She conferred with law enforcement and changed the wording based on their recommendations. “The city needed this change so it could help those residents,” said Lowenthal, in a statement. “I’m very happy I could make that happen.”
The bill will become law on January 1, 2011, allowing residents of the Peninsula to park on either end of narrow, cul-de-sac streets. Lowenthal said that she made the issue a priority after receiving a flood of complaints from residents who regularly found their vehicles ticketed. The law will begin as a three-year pilot program, and then will be reassessed.
The law will affect streets along Ocean Boulevard from Balboa Place to 72nd Place, but not including 62nd Place.
Lowenthal’s 54th District is comprised of Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes and Santa Catalina Island.
4:45pm August 2 | The State Assembly today approved a bill, AB 2067, by Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (54th District, Long Beach) to create a three-year pilot program that would allow cars to park on either side of a two-way street in the Peninsula neighborhood of Long Beach.
If signed by Governor Schwarzenegger within the next twelve days, a three-year pilot program would be created to test the system.
Many of the two-way residential streets are so narrow that it becomes difficult to maneuver while parking along the curb. With the passage of this bill, cars would be allowed to park with their left wheels along the left curb. Basically, cars on the peninsula would be allowed to park on “the wrong side of the street.”
Last year, peninsula residents began complaining to Assemblymember Lowenthal about receiving parking tickets for parking in front of their own homes.
“These streets are so small that you really need some special rules,” said Assemblymember Lowenthal, D-Long Beach. “The people who live there have been asking for this help for a long time.”
The three-year pilot program would be limited to select streets only in the upscale peninsula neighborhood. The language of the proposed bill reads:
The area covered by the ordinance or resolution shall be limited to the streets perpendicular to Ocean Boulevard beginning at Balboa Place and ending at 72nd Place, but shall not cover 62nd Place.
The Governor vetoed a similar bill last year, but a press release from Assemblymember Lowenthal’s office says that there is no opposition to AB 2067 after months of discussion with the Governor’s office and the California Highway Patrol.