This year, hundreds of students will once again debate the University’s age-old question every morning.
Bike or drive, bike or drive?
The Department of Public Safety has already started selling day and night parking permits for students and faculty for the 2001-02 academic year. For $84, students receive a decal good for a year’s worth of parking in several lots around campus.
Rand Stamm, the DPS parking and transportation manager, said the department will sell around 6,000 permits by the end of the academic year, about half of which are student permits.
“It’s very easy for students to get a daytime permit,” he said.
About half of the 3,200 total parking spots in campus lots are student spots, Stamm estimated.
Students can pick up permits by going to the DPS, located in Straub Hall, and filling out a scantron form. Stamm said there is no limit on how many daytime permits can be sold.
DPS also issues a limited number of overnight parking permits to students in the residence halls. When they fill out a residence hall application, students can indicate whether or not they want an overnight permit. The students who indicate they want a permit are entered into a lottery for the permits.
To alleviate the problem of parking on campus, Stamm encouraged students to attempt to find alternate modes of transportation, including Lane Transit District’s new Breeze shuttle.
“It’s a great idea,” Stamm said of the shuttle. “It’s especially good for students in the dorms.”
Fred Tepfer, a planning associate with the University Planning Department, also said students should use alternate transportation, or at least use cars in more efficient ways.
“We have a system here that encourages alternative transportation,” he said.
Tepfer said students can buy multiple day-parking passes to cut down driving, but not cut it out entirely. He also said that students can carpool to split the cost of a permit.
Tepfer said adding more parking is not in the University’s immediate future.
“There are equal advantages and disadvantages to adding parking,” Tepfer said. “It tends to feed on itself.”
He said even at some campuses, where there is unlimited parking, it’s sometimes still not enough.
“The secret is to use the resource efficiently,” he said.
Tepfer said at peak times — usually on rainy days in the morning — the demand for parking spaces almost meets the supply. He said usually students can find spots, but they might be far away. Still, the farthest parking lots are less than a 10-minute walk to campus, he said.
Tepfer quoted a University of California dean who once said that any large university needs “football for the alumni, parking for the faculty and sex for the students.”
DPS issues permits to faculty at a price of $150 per year. Faculty and staff parking lots are separate from student parking lots.
DPS’s Web site outlines many different ways to get to campus. The site mentions bicycling as the most effective way to go.
According to the site: “The health of a community is a result of its accumulative actions, and bicycling is a means of promoting both personal and community health.”
Alternate modes can solve parking woes
Daily Emerald
September 16, 2001
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