I am a member of the staff here at the University of Oregon and my husband is a law student. I recently got a ticket for not having my University parking permit permanently attached to the bumper of my car. When I broached the Department of Public Safety about the possibility of getting a rearview mirror hanging parking permit, or sticking the permit on my back window, the parking and transportation manager gave me the brush-off, and implied that he saw no reason to change the current system. How much harder is it to look at the back windshield than the back bumper?
Here are some of my reasons for not wanting bumper sticker parking permits:
(1) They are very, very difficult to get off, so after a few years you either have a thick collection from putting the permits on top of one another or a patchwork quilt of permits next to each other. Plus, older permits start to fade and crack and look ugly, but getting them off is such a pain that most people don’t bother.
(2) If your car is in the shop, you have to go to Public Safety and get a special permit. If the repairs will take longer than a week, you have to get a note from the repair shop (and presumably your mommy).
(3) If your permit is on a car used by more than one person, and you borrow your friend’s car, sans permit, you have to buy a day pass when you already paid once for the right to park on campus.
(4) When selling a car, having old stickers on the bumper decreases the car’s value, even more so if the bumper is scratched from trying to remove the stickers.
If the permits were rearview mirror hanging tags then all of these problems could be avoided. Plus, there would be the added benefits of:
(1) The permits being usable in more than one car.
(2) The tags could be reusable for more than one year. Instead of attaching a big sticker to the bumper, DPS could have tiny colored stickers with the years on them to attach to the hanging tags. It seems like tiny stickers would be much cheaper than the big stickers currently used, which obviously have to be specially printed for the University.
Reasons that DPS might be opposed include:
(1) Less revenue because they lose the revenue from day passes, and the revenue from students having to buy second car permits.
(2) Parking officers would have to patrol at the front of cars rather than the back.
(3) In theory, hanging tags could get stolen more (but only if people don’t lock their cars).
I refuse to believe I’m the only staff member or student who hates those bumper sticker permits and the hassle they represent. Imagine if you had a brand new BMW 5 Series or a Lincoln Navigator. Wouldn’t it be awful to stick a tacky University parking permit on it? Can’t DPS even consider an alternative? I’ve been at a couple other Universities with window stickers (which, although not transferable, are easy to remove) or hanging tags which are all-around super. Either of these types of parking permit tags would be much more user-friendly, especially the rearview mirror hanging kind.