To the Editor:

Curbing the misuse of disabled-persons parking placards is a top priority at UCLA Transportation Services. The campus has worked diligently to develop new programs and partnerships to stop the misuse of these placards and maximize the amount of parking spaces for legitimate placard-holders. We’ve made significant progress.

The proliferation of parking-placard issuance in the late ’80s triggered a trend among non-disabled people who obtain placards with falsified information. In the last decade, UCLA began working closely with the Department of Motor Vehicles in coordinating “stings” on campus to determine whether placards were being used lawfully.

To encourage students to park legally, UCLA places notices in the Daily Bruin each quarter urging use of the Disabled Placard Misuse Hotline. The campus is also informed of the requirement for faculty, staff and students to display a UCLA parking permit along with their placards and of fines for the misuse of placards.

Recently established by the university, the Disabled Placard Misuse Hotline (310-825-9555) allows individuals to report in confidence any suspected abuse of placards both on- and off-campus, including streets surrounding UCLA where residents’ ability to park is affected. Calls reporting misuse off-campus are forwarded to the L.A. Department of Transportation. In an effort to further assist our neighbors, UCLA Parking Enforcement has partnered with the City of Los Angeles Parking Enforcement to share information on violators, letting them know that they cannot cross jurisdictional lines to avoid receiving citations.

UCLA has taken a hard stance on violators in order to protect the parking spaces of the disabled. For instance, in metered parking stalls — where legitimate disabled placard-holders can park without inserting money — a person found to be misusing a placard would receive two citations, one for placard misuse and another for parking at an expired meter. If an unauthorized vehicle is parked in a stall marked disabled, the violator could receive fines totaling $850. On-campus parking lots also are being patrolled continually.

While these efforts have served as deterrents to disabled placard misuse at UCLA and the surrounding neighborhoods, they have certainly not ended it. The battle to protect accessible parking spaces for legitimately disabled placard holders continues at UCLA.

Steve Rand
UCLA Traffic Manager