Kokua Line: How do residential restricted parking zones work?
May 16—Will the bill before the City Council keep people from parking their Turo cars on the street ? If not, they'll just get residential permits and keep taking up all the neighborhood parking.
Question : Will the bill before the City Council keep people from parking their Turo cars on the street ? If not, they'll just get residential permits and keep taking up all the neighborhood parking.
Answer : You are referring to Oahu residents who sell the temporary use of vehicles they own via the online platform. As such peer-to-peer car rentals grow more common, so do complaints about these cars taking up Honolulu street parking. Turo hosts, as the company calls them, don't have airport parking for their vehicles. To be clear, it's already illegal for Turo hosts to store their rental vehicles on public streets, according to Honolulu's Department of Planning and Permitting.
As DPP spokesperson Curtis Lum has told Kokua Line in the past, "A car rental business is allowed in a residential area as a home occupation. No more than two cars are allowed for the business and they need to be parked off-street and on the owner's property. No cars are allowed to be parked on the street. A commercial parking lot is not allowed on residential property."
As for Bill 20 (2023 ), the measure before the Honolulu City Council does not mention Turo or any other peer-to-peer car rental service. The bill is not specifically aimed at that problem, but on improving the availability of street parking for neighborhood residents in areas where space is hard to find for a variety of reasons, including the one you described. The bill () would allow neighborhoods to restrict parking to their residents and guests, if a majority of the neighborhood wants to do so. Residents would pay for annual and visitor permits ; there would be limits on the number of permits issued.
Under the bill's current language, "Each eligible dwelling unit is limited to four annual residential permits and one annual visitor permit ; provided that a resident may request a waiver of this limitation from the director. In determining whether to grant a waiver request, the director may consider the availability of on-street parking in the requester's residential area and the number of licensed drivers in the household."
Q : Regarding the proposed expansion of restricted parking zones on Oahu, couldn't this violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, if disability parking is not accessible ?
A : There's an exception in Bill 20 (2023 ) for vehicles displaying a valid disability parking placard, which "may park in an RPZ without obtaining or displaying an RPZ permit." That same exception would apply to commercial vehicles "during active delivery or service to a property within the RPZ " and to mopeds, motorcycles and motor scooters as defined by state law, under the current version of the bill.
Q : Regarding the for-profit GreenDrop trailers, how do they make a profit when they pay a nonprofit like the American Red Cross for whatever is given to them from the public ?
A : GreenDrop pays a bulk rate for the donated goods, which are subsequently sold individually at Savers thrift stores.
Presumably, Savers sells enough of the donated items for more than its partner GreenDrop paid—that's how their parent company makes money.
There are five GreenDrop trailers on Oahu, where people can donate gently used clothing, small household appliances and many other salable items.
Mahalo Many thanks to the couple who assisted my mother when she felt faint walking home from the mall. They were driving by when they noticed that she looked "wobbly " on the sidewalk, pulled over in a safe spot and offered a helping hand. My mom insisted that she would be fine and understandably did not want to get in a stranger's car, so the lady got out of the car and walked her home. My mom is fine now and appreciates the assistance.—S.N.------Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-500, Honolulu, HI 96813 ; call 808-529-4773 ; or email kokualine @staradvertiser.com.------
