It has gotten harder to park at the University in the past year, and it looks like it will continue to get worse.
Students now have to pay more than twice as much for parking passes as they did last year. They will soon, at least for the short term, have fewer spaces in which to park.
The Department of Public Safety, which administers parking on campus, has cut the hours in which some parking lots are open to students and has started issuing more tickets. DPS made some of the changes out of financial necessity, but others aim to reduce the number of students who drive to campus and ensure students can park safely.
It’s widely believed the University sells more parking passes to students than it has spaces for them on campus. However, the head of parking on campus, DPS Capt. Herb Horner, said that technically stopped being true when the 2009–10 school year began.
That’s because this academic year, DPS more than doubled the cost of a parking pass for students. From $125 a year, the price rose to $300, cutting the number of students who bought passes from DPS drastically.
Horner said there were as many as 4,000 students with passes before the change, but the number dropped to 1,000 afterward.
“Demand was there for the parking,” Horner said. “So one of the things you do to control demand is you adjust prices.”
Though the change did reduce the demand, Horner said it still didn’t make parking on campus any easier.
“Our permit sales are way down, but yet our lots are still full,” he said. Later he added even he has problems finding a space: “Unless you come here before 10 in the morning or come in after 4, it’s difficult to find a place to park. It’s not impossible … If I come to campus, I’ll be really lucky to find a place to park behind (McArthur) Court, and that’s faculty-staff only.”
That kind of difficulty has earned the University a reputation for being unfriendly to cars. College Prowler, a Web site that grades colleges in different categories, gave the University a C+ for parking. The site calls parking the school’s fourth-worst attribute, worse even than its weather and on-campus housing.
“They will tell you there’s parking, but they’re lying,” one reviewer on the site wrote. “Parking is insane,” another wrote. “It is impossible to get a parking spot anywhere on campus between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. They sell unlimited parking passes, so you are in no way guaranteed a spot.”
There is little relief in sight. Indeed, DPS is getting stricter in enforcing parking rules and tightening its policy. For instance, it has extended the hours it closes one of the largest University lots to students, the one across Kincaid Street from Prince Lucien Campbell Hall. Students parking in the lot, which was once open overnight even to those without parking passes, are now subject to tickets if they remain parked after midnight.
Unlike many of the University’s parking changes, which are aimed at reducing demand for parking or increasing revenue for DPS’ parking fund, Horner said DPS increased the number of tickets to those parked in the lot because of its proximity to campus bars.
Horner said, “We didn’t feel it was a good place for students — good, clean, sober students — to be parking and then, at 2 in the morning, having to come out after bars close and having to deal with people who were drunk and obnoxious and misbehaving. We didn’t think it was a good fit.”
But that change is inconvenient for students studying overnight in the Knight Library. Horner and ASUO Senate President Nick Gower said they are trying to find another place for students using the library to park, but they don’t have a solution yet. Meanwhile, DPS, which currently only gives out tickets for unpaid parking meters Monday through Friday, 11 hours a day, will now start giving out tickets for meter-related offenses on Saturdays as well.
There are also price increases on the horizon for faculty, visitor and commercial passes. The reason: DPS needs to pay off millions of dollars of debt the University incurred in building the parking structure for the Matthew Knight Arena. Read more in Wednesday’s Emerald. Or visit dailyemerald.com/multimedia.
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