Yokosuka parking problems driving people on base crazy
By Steve Liewer, Yokosuka
bureau chief
Jason Carter / Stars and Stripes
Small spots of land near the waterfront are packed with cars each morning in the hunt for
parking spaces at Yokosuka Naval Base. |
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Each morning around 7:30 the swarm
begins outside Yokosuka Naval Hospital. Toyotas and Hondas, subcompacts and SUVs, circling
like sharks in search of their elusive prey.
A parking space.
“It sucks,” said Romelia Tauzin, 35, as she walked into the
hospital with two children Monday morning. “I had to park way over there near the
back of the O(fficers’) Club. Every time I come here, I have to drive around many
times, and then walk a long ways.”
Patients plan on coming plenty early so they can join the morning
hunt, or surrender at the hinterlands and hoof it from two or three blocks away. God help
them if it’s raining, or steamy hot, or the kids are cranky.
A mile away on the waterfront, parking is just as tight. The Ship
Repair Facility’s some 2,000 workers, and at least that many sailors stationed aboard
ships, vie for spaces in the jumble of industrial warehouses and repair shops.
“I leave (home) at 6 in the morning to find a space,” said
Petty Officer 2nd Class Levar Johnson, 23, an operations specialist on the 7th Fleet staff
aboard the USS Blue Ridge. “I drive around for 15 minutes looking for a space.”
Petty Officer 2nd Class Carmen Egurola, 21, sees the problem up close
each day when she drops her husband off at the Blue Ridge.
| Many on Navy base think reserved spots for
officers is waste of valuable space The
handful of spaces reserved for Yokosuka Naval Base’s top brass away from their
commands strikes a nerve with many sailors.
No one begrudges an admiral a parking space next to
his office or a destroyer’s commanding officer a spot near his ship.
“These guys deserve their parking spots,”
said Petty Officer 1st Class Hayward Murray, 27, of the 7th Fleet staff.
But some in the lower ranks wonder if those privileged
few really need a coveted up-front space next to the Commissary or the Exchange, or a
24-hour reserved spot in front of the galley door.
“I don’t see that as fair,” said
Monique Fields, 28, whose husband is a sailor. “As far as if you’re a colonel or
something — that shouldn’t matter.”
“Almost every time I go through there,
they’re not being used,” said George Hewett, 43, a retired Air Force master
sergeant married to a Navy petty officer second class.
Two years ago, a defense consultant struck back —
at the expense of his own career.
According to an investigation by the Naval Inspector
General, the consultant — a retired enlisted man whose identity was expunged from the
documents — held a GS-16 position, equivalent in rank to a flag-level officer. As
such, both the consultant and his wife began parking in admirals’ spots on visits to
the Commissary and Exchange.
DOD rules don’t grant civilians such privileges.
But the consultant insisted it was his right to park there, even after several
confrontations with one of the admirals and an explicit order from base security
officials. When he continued to park there, the documents say, he was barred from the base
and eventually lost his job.
Through U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., the man
complained to the Inspector General and filed a grievance with the U.S. Office of Civil
Rights. So far, no one has upheld his claim.
— Steve Liewer |
“You have to go around in circles. It’s not only the pier,
it’s all over the base,” Egurola said. “It’s really tight. I
don’t know what they could do.”
A steady increase in population since the 1980s has left Yokosuka
with what seems to be the tightest parking situation of any base in Japan. The waterfront
and the area around the hospital and its neighboring Personal Support Detachment remain
the base’s toughest parking problems, but not the only ones.
The basic problem simply is too many people crammed in too little
space, at least by American standards. About 23,000 people either live or work in what
amounts to a tiny city of some 700 acres. There are 8,500 parking spaces.
On most days, visitors to “The Hill” surrounding the
administrative offices of Fleet Activities Yokosuka (CFAY), U.S. Naval Forces Japan (CNFJ)
and Submarine Group 7, are hard-pressed to find parking because nearly every space is
reserved for employees. The Navy Exchange parking lot is tiny, though space is ample in
the gigantic lot at the adjacent commissary. Midday parking around the Navy Lodge and
Seaside Lodge has grown quite scarce also.
The parking problem has grown along with the base’s population,
which was pushed up by the 1992 closure of Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. The
problem eases somewhat when the fleet goes to sea — especially the Kitty Hawk, which
carries about 3,000 Yokosuka-based sailors.
“It wouldn’t be a problem if the ships were all
deployed,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Mark Crawford, 37. “But when
they’re here, it’s very, very hard.”
With no space, go up
At a crowded base in a crowded country, reliant on the Japanese
government to pay for new parking, the Navy is limited in how much it can improve things.
Its strategy so far has been to seek construction of multi-story garages instead of
surface lots.
A five-story garage opened along with the Fleet Recreation Center in
1998. Two more garages, near the Fleet Theater and near The Sullivans Elementary School,
opened last year.
“We’re in the middle of a multi-year effort to resolve the
issue,” said Mike Chase, base spokesman. “We’ve tackled the problem areas
first.”
The new eight-story garage near the Fleet Theater boosted parking in
the waterfront area from 483 spaces to 852. It allowed CFAY to switch the reserved parking
spots for hundreds of workers at the nearby Ship Repair Facility into the garage, opening
up surface spaces near the ships for fleet sailors. The garage has all but eliminated the
parking problem for the repair facility’s 2,000 workers, of whom 1,800 are Japanese
civilians.
The solution to the hospital parking problem remains on the drawing
board. There is a 47-space lot, for patient use only, near the hospital’s front door.
A second 119-space lot for patient and employee parking is a few feet away. About 1,000
people work at the hospital.
Chase said the Japanese government has agreed to build a 440-space
garage in place of the larger parking lot. Though the construction date isn’t set, he
said the new garage likely will be in place by 2005.
The parking crunch has prompted many commands on the base to reserve
parking for their employees and, in some cases, their customers. Residents also get
reserved spaces at most apartment towers and townhouses as well. About 30 percent of all
parking spaces at Yokosuka are reserved, Chase said.
According to Department of Defense instructions, a given command is
entitled to parking spaces only for its commanding officer, executive officer, senior
enlisted sailor and its official government vehicles.
In practice, though, almost anything goes. CFAY and CNFJ reserve
spaces not only for their top officers, but for the officers’ guests, who may be
foreign dignitaries.
The 7th Fleet reserves spaces for each of its division officers.
Hundreds of SRF workers use their own numbered spaces. Numerous other commands reserve
spaces for workers.
“I really think it’s a little bit overdone,” Egurola
said. “It seems to me they drag it out, to division officers. We all work in the same
place.”
Chase said base security officials are rethinking how they allocate
reserved parking spaces. Few commands want to give up parking spaces that historically
have belonged to them. Prying them away is a politically delicate matter.
Parking is enforced by base security guards, who can give tickets
just as police do in the United States. Violators are not fined, but they may lose points
off of their drivers’ licenses. Accumulate enough points, and you lose your license.
Scofflaws victim
Dawn Everix is tired of being a victim of parking scofflaws. She and
her husband, an enlisted sailor, live in an apartment tower sandwiched between the
hospital/Officer’s Club area on one side, and the Personnel Support Detachment on the
other. The reserved spots of the Everixes and their neighbors must look tempting to people
circling the crowded lots.
“Four times last week, people from the Officer’s Club were
parked here in our reserved space when I came home,” Everix said. “We called the
police … I’m fed up.”
Chase believes the larger problem is not so much parking, but traffic
congestion. The base is on a peninsula, and there are only two entrances a few hundred
yards apart. One is open only during morning and evening rush hours. The main gate opens
onto Route 16, Yokosuka’s busiest thoroughfare. During the evening crush, traffic
frequently backs up for a quarter mile inside the base.
As the congestion has worsened, many Yokosuka residents have turned
to buses and bicycles (though parking for bikes is as scarce as it is for cars). Hundreds,
even thousands, avoid the frustration by simply walking to work.
“I don’t really have much of a problem,” said Petty
Officer 1st Class James Hickok, 25. “Sometimes you have to walk a little, but
everybody needs a little exercise.”
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