The city of Los Angeles is about to get tough with motorists who park in tow-away zones during rush hour.

For years, most drivers who parked illegally on major thoroughfares were only ticketed, even after backing up rush-hour traffic for blocks. Just 7 percent actually got towed; often the drivers are able to get back to their cars before tow trucks can get the OK and arrive from remote police garages to hook them up.

But parking enforcement officials say they plan more widespread use of tow staging areas to nab offenders on the area’s busiest streets before they can escape. Instead of responding from far away, trucks will be lined up within blocks of these trouble spots.

“We know where the parking violators are and we are now going to go after them,” said Jimmy Price, chief of parking enforcement for the city’s transportation department.

The get-tough approach is part of L.A. Mayor James Hahn’s plan, announced last month, to speed up traffic flow along 35 of L.A.’s major traffic corridors, including Wilshire, Olympic, Ventura and Victory boulevards.

Cars that are parked in curbside lanes during rush hour force car and bus drivers to merge into the lanes on their left, backing up traffic and increasing the potential for lane-change accidents. Clearing away these cars and keeping the curb lane open is regarded as one of the cheapest and simplest ways to increase street capacity during rush hour.

“All throughout L.A., but especially downtown, you’ve got streets that really can’t be widened, so these types of measures are really the best alternative out there,” said Ed Cline, senior traffic engineer with Willdan Group, a municipal consulting firm in Industry.

But the approach isn’t without its challenges. In L.A., tow truck drivers say parking enforcement officers often pass up the chance to tow vehicles because they don’t want to spend the time to fill out a special form.

To issue a parking citation for cars in tow zones, L.A. officers need only punch the car’s license plate into a handheld ticket machine and it prints out a ticket. Having the car towed means filling out a detailed form that notes any damage to the vehicle and a description of the surrounding properties.

A new system that would reduce the time from the current 10 to 12 minutes to two or three minutes won’t come online until next year. “It’s one of my pet peeves,” said Steve Smith, owner of S & J; Wilshire Tow. “DOT is supposed to keep the city moving,” Smith said.

L.A. was one of the first cities to place rush-hour parking restrictions on major streets in the early 1950s, according to John Fisher, assistant general manager for operations at the L.A. Department of Transportation.

In the ensuing decades, parking bans have spread from downtown throughout the entire city, typically from 7 to 9 in the morning and 4 to 6 in the afternoon. Some of the bans have been expanded an hour in each direction, especially in the afternoons.

Fisher said that the number of streets with rush-hour parking bans has remained stable over the past 10 years or so, largely because merchants have resisted efforts to expand them, citing potential loss of business.

Retailers complained earlier this year when curbside parking was taken away on Wilshire Boulevard in West L.A. to make way for a peak-hour dedicated bus lane.

Other cities have also been slow to adopt peak-hour parking bans. In Long Beach and Glendale, most streets have an extra-wide curb lane that accommodates parking along with traffic, so banning parking would yield only marginal improvement in traffic flow.

Reducing lag times

In the fiscal year ended June 30, the city of Los Angeles issued 183,767 parking citations for vehicles parked illegally in tow-away zones during rush hour. But only 9,912 of those cars were actually towed.

The biggest reason for the gap: Drivers get away before the tow truck can arrive.

“Most of the time, people only park there for five minutes or 10 minutes as they go to the ATM or pick up clothes from the cleaners,” Price said. “That’s enough time for us to give them a ticket, but it’s not enough time for us to get a tow truck out there from the police garage. By the time the tow truck gets there, the cars are gone.”

To cut down the lag time, the city in recent years has set up staging areas near certain intersections so that the tow trucks can arrive within a couple of minutes of receiving calls from parking enforcement officers. These areas will be extended to the major streets targeted under Hahn’s plan, starting in the next two weeks, as some officers are pulled in from other areas, Price said.

In other cities, the problem is smaller.

“We have maybe six to 10 cars a day that we tow” from the streets with peak hour parking bans, said Rod Marquez, parking operations officer for the city of West Hollywood.

Beverly Hills stages tow trucks near portions of the three major streets with peak-hour parking bans: Wilshire, Olympic and La Cienega boulevards. However, according to Lt. Mike Hines, traffic bureau commander for the Beverly Hills Police Department, the city tows only about five cars per day.

“There are more parked cars that get citations, but often the driver sees the officer writing up the citation and then moves the car. Since the purpose of towing is to clear the lanes and not to generate revenues, there’s no point in proceeding to tow those cars,” Hines said.

At S & J; Wilshire Tow, Smith is bothered by the reluctance of L.A. parking officers to have a vehicle towed. “One day someone in the right lane is going to swerve into the left lane and cause an accident and an attorney will figure out that it was supposed to be a tow-away zone and sue the city,” he said.

DOT’s Price acknowledged that in “isolated instances” enforcement officers don’t take the time to fill out the paperwork, but he said he expects the problem to be resolved sometime next year when the city signs a contract with an outside vendor to provide hand-held computers that will speed the paperwork process.

“That will allow us to tow many more vehicles,” Price said.

And towing more cars won’t just send a signal to the drivers of those cars.

“If you tow an auto, six to 10 people watch that and they’re not going to make the same mistake themselves,” traffic engineer Cline said. “But they’ll forget this lesson in a few weeks, so that’s why it’s important to keep up the towing.”