I drove down Alderbrook Drive in Santa Rosa and saw Bay Street, which featured a sign saying “Not a Through Street.” Then I drove just one block further and saw a three-home stub of Alderbrook Drive featuring a sign saying “Dead End.” And one-half block further I found Alderbrook Lane, which had a sign saying “No Outlet.”
Who decided on these three different-but-the-same signs? Were there characteristics of the streets that called for different signs?
Intrigued, I drove around town looking at signs. My informal search determined that “Not a Through Street” is clearly the most popular way to warn drivers that a street is, well, a dead end. I found “Not a Through Street” signs on Parsons Drive, Hendley Street, Cummings Drive and numerous other places.
I found one other “Dead End” sign, on Happy Valley Drive near Grace Drive, and I found two other “No Outlet” signs, on Brown Street at Tupper Street and on Sherwood Drive after Marian Lane.
I was confused by several courts off Hidden Valley Road that had no warning signs at all. I decided that the word “Court” must be sufficient to denote No Outlet or Dead End. But then I found “Not a Through Street” signs on Dowling Court, Walnut Court, Gray Court and several other courts. And I found another “No Outlet” sign on Kjell Court.
“Dead End” is a seven-letter sign. “No Outlet” is an eight-letter sign. Why am I not surprised that “Not a Through Street,” the alternative being used the most, is a 17-letter sign?
Just when I thought I’d seen all the alternatives, I found a sign saying “Not Through to Farmers Lane” on Church Street off Sonoma Avenue. Bless the creativity of sign makers.
This creativity extends to other signs. On Hexem Avenue, there’s a sign warning of “Bumps.” On Humboldt Street, the famous “Bicycle Boulevard,” there are numerous signs that say “Bump” (instead of “Bumps”) and other signs saying “Speed Table” and “Speed Bump.” Spring Creek Drive features signs saying “Bumps Next 500 Ft” and others saying “Bump 10 MPH.”
Running on empty?
The county of Sonoma has money problems, as do many other cities and counties. Falling tax revenue is one problem, especially when mandatory expenses skyrocket. Here’s one key statistic: Sonoma County’s pension contributions, payments on pension obligation bonds and payments toward retiree health coverage rose from $21,404,307 in fiscal year 1999-2000 to an estimated $92,010,270 in fiscal year 2010-2011. That’s an increase of 330 percent in 11 years. Are there more county employees? No, the number of county employees declined by about 5 percent in the same period of time. Are there 330 percent more retirees? No, the number of retirees increased by about 66 percent.
The hot topic of parking
I received a $38 parking ticket (“Parking Violation Notice”) in Santa Rosa recently. I parked in front of the Welfare League Building in Railroad Square, in the only available parking space on that side of the street. It was a yellow curb “freight loading” zone, and I thought I could use it to unload my donation of clothing and shoes to the Welfare League. I thought wrong. While I carried in items from my car’s open trunk and back seat, the parking enforcement officer (PEO) somehow found a perfect few seconds to ticket me.
I can hardly describe how infuriating this ticket was. I had many dark thoughts, but reason prevailed. I contacted the city’s parking office and appealed the ticket over the telephone. The personnel with whom I spoke were very helpful, friendly and professional.
I decided to investigate how cities in our region handle parking issues, of which Santa Rosa may have the most. Certainly it has the most parking kiosks (81), those machines that frustrate some parkers. Santa Rosa also has the most parking meters (more than 1,000) and the most controlled parking spaces (more than 10,000). Santa Rosa appears to be the only city in Sonoma County that has parking meters, although most cities have some form of parking time limits and restrictions on “inappropriate” parking (like in front of a fire hydrant).
For instance, Cotati has no meters but two-hour parking limits “downtown,” enforced by one community service officer and police, as needed. Healdsburg has no meters but generally a three-hour downtown parking limit, enforced by a PEO. Sebastopol has no meters but parking limits of one hour, two hours or three hours at various points downtown, enforced by one part-time PEO. The overtime parking fine is $25.
Sonoma has no meters but a two-hour parking limit, enforced by two full-time PEOs plus volunteers in policing trained by the sheriff’s department. Petaluma has no meters but generally a two-hour parking limit on downtown streets (four hours in the city’s garage), carrying an overtime fine of $48. Enforcement is carried out using a $65,000 Canadian-designed SUV with cameras, lasers and GPS. No more chalking of tires!
Windsor has no meters and limited parking in only one area, in front of the city’s corporation yard across from the high school. Cloverdale has no meters, no time limits, no fines for overparking, and no PEOs. Inappropriate parking is tagged at $49.
Looking at other counties: Calistoga has no meters but a three-hour parking limit downtown, enforced by two part-time cadets. The parking fine is $35. Novato has no meters but two-hour limited parking in a four-block area downtown, enforced by interns working on foot. The parking fine is $45. St. Helena has no meters but a three-hour parking limit downtown, enforced by two PEOs who chalk tires. The parking fine is $35.
San Rafael (population 56,000) has parking meters downtown as well as two-hour parking limits, enforced by no fewer than six parking officers with special training. An overtime parking ticket costs $28. Interestingly, little San Anselmo (population 12,000) has parking meters and two- or four-hour parking limits, enforced by one community service officer four days each week and by police officers at other times. An expired meter ticket is $38 and overtime parking costs $33.
Then we have Santa Rosa (population 167,000) with parking issues that are more complex than any other city in Napa, Sonoma or Marin counties. The city has five garages and multiple street-level parking lots downtown, with three zones of primary parking enforcement—downtown, Railroad Square and Santa Rosa Junior College—keeping five PEOs and the junior college police officers quite busy. The city also uses the same type of $65,000 super-SUV found in Petaluma for overtime parking enforcement. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, the city collected $859,000 in parking fines. By comparison, Sebastopol collected about $25,000 in the same fiscal year. So parking enforcement and fines are big business in Santa Rosa. An overtime parking ticket is $33 in Santa Rosa. The “parking prohibited” fine is $48. A yellow curb violation—my recent sin—costs $38. A blue curb violation is $288. Parking on posted private property is $63. Using slugs in a parking meter costs $48. Parking longer than 72 hours/removal costs $116.
Santa Rosa has a rich history of parking ideas that have often changed. It had multi-story parking garages that had to be torn down due to construction or earthquake problems. It had primarily parallel parking downtown before it was changed to angled parking. Now it has a combination of both. It’s had debates over the merits/disadvantages of free parking and whether any free parking should be offered in garages. It’s had parking attendants replaced by machines. It’s had debates over the price of monthly parking permits in garages, now ranging from $62 for the least-expensive non-reserved space to $120 for a reserved space.
And now it has another big debate over whether Santa Rosa Plaza can charge for parking as a way to keep downtown Santa Rosa workers from parking in the plaza’s best covered parking spaces all day—for free.
