Parking debated at
Faculty Senate

The Faculty Senate spent considerable time at its Sept. 21 meeting in a lively, sometimes confrontational, debate with members of the university’s transportation office over university parking issues.

Much of the discussion centered around two issues: permit changes in the Dan Allen and Coliseum decks, and visitor parking.

Beginning with the fall semester, some spots in the two decks that had been general “C” parking were converted to lot-specific “DC” and “DD” permits. Tom Kendig, transportation director, told the group that the change had allowed his office to maximize use of the spaces there, and also provide an additional 450 permits to people who previously had difficulty obtaining them, such as graduate students and research assistants.

“We think that by restricting - perhaps - your movement somewhat, this has allowed us to provide for more people overall,” Kendig said.

Several senators, however, said that the parking gains made should not “have come at the expense of the faculty.”

“Faculty in particular need the benefit of parking more so than students do,” Senator James Martin said. “When I see undergraduate students coming and parking (in the deck) with “D” stickers, I say ‘what’s going on here?’ Faculty need to be able to get to their classrooms, go different places for collaboration, whether it’s the vet school or Centennial Campus or wherever. How can faculty do their jobs given the current parking system? ... If anyone should have to search (for parking), it’s the students. It should not be faculty who have to search.”

Kendig responded that his office has noticed that a few spots still go unused in the very top of the Dan Allen Deck, and that if the deck is full, then “C” parking is available in the Central Campus Pay Lot. “That lot has never filled, so there are spaces there.” Greg Cain, assistant director for parking services, also noted that faculty may still switch to the “DC” or “DD” permits, which have space available and are also cheaper than “C” permits.

Senator Linda Hanley-Bowdoin said that the current parking system was fine for those who could leave their cars in the same spot all day, but that “the reality is for faculty, that’s no longer the case. We are split between two or three campuses, and we must be able to move back and forth at difficult times of the day. ... We have to be here for meetings and teaching, and maybe our research lab is elsewhere. There needs to be some mechanism for making that transition so we don’t lose hours upon hours of our time.”

Kendig said that’s exactly what the new permits were designed to do. “You can purchase either a ‘DC’ or ‘DD’ permit, and that permit will allow you to park in the designated deck and give you access to almost 1,000 spaces on Centennial Campus. On the ‘DD’ side of the deck, there is space. That’s what we’re trying to manage.” Cain also pointed out that departments may purchase additional permits for their faculty and staff that can be shared for those times when movement around campus is required.

On the issue of visitor passes, a number of senators noted that the process of guest parking was unclear and left them paying parking fees for the visitors they bring to campus for lectures and other events. Senator Bob Bruck said that some of the visitors he has brought to campus said “I’m never coming back here again” because of the parking.

Kendig first said the guest policy is that anyone who comes to campus two times per week or less “is supposed to be able to park for free,” but later said that transportation officials don’t have any system in place to actually keep up with the number of visits. He later said visitors are given a warning the first time their vehicle is found parked without a permit and given a ticket on any subsequent offense.

“Visitor parking has been a difficult issue for us,” Kendig said. He said Cain had formed a team to examine ways the issue might be resolved. He also said that transportation was looking into instituting a fee for visitors, “much the way it works on 99 percent of the campuses in this country.”

Other parking issues discussed included:

• The lack of shelters for the bus stops on Centennial Campus
• The possibility of a parking deck in the Riddick lot that would provide both “B” and visitor’s parking
• The status of the “people mover,” a monorail concept once proposed to bring people in from remote parking areas
• The dangers of both bus stops and pedestrian travel across Western Boulevard (Kendig said a proposal had been made to the state Department of Transportation to build a pedestrian/bicycle tunnel under Western).

Asked about the overselling of parking spaces, Kendig took the opportunity to sum up the issues facing his office.

“Overall, we have more than 16,500 parking spaces across the entire campus and we sell less than that in the number of permits,” he said. “We’ve got spaces on Centennial Campus that probably never have had a car parked in them. We sell less permits than we have spaces. Our problem is that of the 35,000 people on campus, 20,000 want to park on North Campus. We’ve got enough spaces, we just can’t get people to park in them.”

Transportation hopes to solve some of those issues when it holds meetings Oct. 5 and 6 to discuss the bus system and other alternative transportation methods.

Posted September 29, 2004

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