I pit college campus parking

The BBQ Pit
1

Ok, I’ve been to college campusesesi all across this country, and it amazes me how things work.

A typical university can have 100 buildings, 18000 students, and 5500 parking spaces. Well fuck me blind.

I’m not a traffic engineer or anything, but I see a problem with that.

My question: Why don’t university planners ever plan for say, PARKING! I would love to see another business have this problem. Let’s take Wal-Mart (who we all hate) for example. To park at Wal-Mart you need a parking permit. 50 for a six month permit. You pay the money but there are never any spaces. You can park three miles away and ride the shuttle bus to the store. You can pay .25 for 10 minutes to park only one half a mile from the store.

But, right in front of the store are about 50 unoccupied spots reserved for managers, cashiers, stockers, etc. with the accompanying signs detailing the harsh penalties for parking in these spots without the valid decals.

Would Wal-Mart get away with it? No. And I pay nothing to shop there. But if I pay $25k to go to school, I get treated like cattle to try to get into class…

2

How about this: the scene is a fine autumn night, and I pull up on the campus of my university, into the instructor’s lot (I had a legit parking pass). A kid comes up to me when I’m dragging my materials out of the car, and says “you can’t park here.”

And I said “I have a blue pass. I can park here.”

And he said “No, you can’t. There’s going to be a (basket)ball game tonight, and this lot is reserved for the game.”

Me: “Um, this is the lot for people teaching Engineering classes. I’m teaching an Engineering class tonight.”

Him: “It doesn’t matter.”

Me: “You mean to tell me, I drove 40 miles to teach a graduate level Engineering class, and I have an instructor’s tag, and I’m in the instructor’s lot, and I can’t park here?”

Him: “Look, I don’t make the rules. Move your car, or you’ll be towed.”

Me: “Well, where the hell am I supposed to park? Keeping in mind, I’m teaching an actual course here, you know, the primary purpose of a University?”

Him: (names a spot that is about 1/2 mile away)

Me: (expletive deleted)

Him: (raises eyes and backs away)

Me: “How in the fuck am I supposed to walk that far to get to the class that I’m teaching?”

Him: “Park (1/2 mile away) and call a cab.”

:rolleyes:

So I left, and parked a half mile away, and walked the whole way. Which isn’t terribly far, but mind you, I was teaching the class at night after working all day, and I was tired, and I was lugging a bag full of papers and books, and not-too-light laptop.

The next day, I called the Dean and complained. Long story short, his response:

“NOBODY parks in the instructor’s lots on a game night. No exceptions.”

Yeah. Because we all know, sports is the primary purpose of going to University, not learning.

(Now, I’ll just sit back and wait for the first person to come in and miss the point entirely and ask me why I hayte teh sports so much. To which I’m unapologetic - if you think a person teaching an actual University course shouldn’t be allowed to park in the teacher’s lot during a game night because it will take one, single, precious spot away from a basketball fan, then you are a dumbass. And yes, I would make the same rant if it was a music fest, cooking class, or an Australian dick poetry competition.)

3

Campus parking is a problem so utterly widespread and unsolvable, it’s…well, it defies any attempts to say more about it.

It’s like complaining about the presence of quartz in beach sand. It just is. It just is.

4

I guess you should have said you were there for the basketball game. The least the prick of a Dean could have done was warn you in advance that you, as an instructor, could not park in the instructor’s lot on game night.
Parking on campus was the worst. It was even more annoying when they’d decide to remodel a building and close off the parking spaces around that building for the construction vehicles and the lot was always half empty but they’d never let anyone park there.

5

You needed a special pass to park on game night, which was purchased with your ticket. I don’t know how much it cost, but I suspect, no exaggeration, it could have been on the order of $50 or more for that single night.

It was my first time teaching an actual class. I had been chased out of lots while taking classes, but I just assumed that teaching one would have been good enough.

As an interesting parallel - when I came to recruit new graduates for my company once, they told me I couldn’t park anywhere on campus except for a for-pay parking garage. And this was at a time when there weren’t that many Engineers being hired. No sweat from me, since I just expensed it, but it seemed to me like they might comp me a parking spot since I was there to potentially offer jobs to their students.

6

Reminds me of a joke someone used to tell me about what supposedly the president of UC-Berkely or some school said in the sixties,

“Being a university president is hard. You’re beholden to a lot of divergent interests. The students are worried about the war in Vietnam, the parents are worried about sex in the dorms, and the faculty is worried about parking.”

7

I remember at the University of Tennessee you paid a like $200 for a spot and they provided 2 spots for every 3 passes given out or 1 spot for every 3. It’s madness.

8

My WAG is that the following conversation happens with some regularity:

Rich Alum: Hey, State Tech! I want to give you all some money. You need a new Robotics Lab? How about a Cancer Research Center? A Geopolitical Think Tank?
Some guy from the university: Well, we have three times as many students as we have parking spaces. We have a prime spot to build a parking garage that would help us immensely. We feel that this is our highest priority here at State Tech.
Rich Alum: Hmm. I hear State A&M wants a Robotics Lab. I’ll give them a call.

Again, just a WAG

9

You think that’s bad? I’m a faculty member, and I can’t even park near my building. The faculty spots (which are often empty) are reserved for curmedgeons and emeritus faculty. Even the garage near my building is full. So I park about five blocks away in the Texas humidity… and they want me to look nice when I’m teaching!

However, the parking dept. is very clear about when they’ll start towing our cars on a football weekend.

10

We have this problem on our campus (of course) but the worst is when they decide to do something for the kids in the area on campus. I have no problem having the children around, but seriously, why must they take up half of the second biggest parking lot for the kids to have their little event on and half of the biggest lot on campus for all the buses to park. Maybe it would be a better idea to pull the bus up, drop off the kids, then park it at the far away lot that is hardly used by anyone except for students in the art building. There are always spots there. I even thought of that when I got down to the lot and saw the buses. Apparently, the lot wasn’t enough for the buses, and the University had actually blocked off the road that runs around behind campus. The only thing to do is pull off in the grass and make a U-turn. How that is a good plan, I will never know. This is what goes on at least once a month though. (Glad I learned the first time…)

Stupid parking lot.

Brendon Small

11

Well, most universities are older than Wal-Mart. The idea that every student would have a car, and want/need to have it on campus is an extremely recent concept. My Alma Mater had a horrific parking problem. It’s also in the middle of an urban area and 250-odd years old. Cars weren’t exactly a problem when they opened the doors. When my Dad was there 40 years ago it wasn’t a problem either, though. University populations have exploded recently, and I’m betting the percentage of students with cars has gone up even more.

I could sing you some crazy songs about parking nightmares, though. My favorite was when it snowed really bad, they’d notify all the residents that they needed to move their cars from their assigned lots, the only place they were allowed to park them, from the hours of 10PM to 6AM for overnight snow removal. Where do I put my car, I ask? “That’s not our responsibility. Nope, you can’t drive them up and park them in the big covered commuter decks. You need a commuter permit for that.” Thankfully as a college student hanging out in the mall/grocery store/whatever parking lot in the snow until dawn was no less entertaining than any of our other plans.

Corollary to that is the time I was laid up for a couple weeks with a torn rotator cuff. The plows had buried my parked-in-a-corner car under a giant snow pile 6 feet high and 8 feet wide, completely covering the whole rear of the car (roof and all). They then called a “overnight snow removal” on us. I was standing outside in a sling (and blanket because I couldn’t get a coat on) while a plow operator told me with a straight face that if I didn’t move my car, it would be towed. I looked at the snow pile, looked at the plow guy, and said, “Hey, if you can dig it out, it’s all yours.”

(It was still there, with most of the pile gone, in the morning)

12

My campus is big enough to warrant two parking garages, constructed entirely on parking ticket fees. That is how much money they collect. Annual parking passes start at $500.

Both buildings are only 5 stories tall, even though the cap on building height is 7 stories (yes, the city put a cap on how tall buildings can be. Fucking communists). So I guess they just didn’t need those 4 extra floors of space.

And, because the nearest garage is across the street, whenever we use our new shiny stadium that we had to have because we had to be division 1, the entire street leading to the emergency veterinary hospital is closed. Because clients with dying pets love to drive all the way around the other side of the complex.

13

Yeah, all of these complaints seem valid. They wouldn’t even let me park where I wanted, and I worked for parking services for 3 1/2 years. ducks and runs

14

I’m pretty sure that my alma mater, Kent State, didn’t add more parking because they made more money renting out dorm rooms and having people on campus over the weekends then they did paying for parking lots that would be empty half the day and over the summer. They were really big on making sure KSU wasn’t a “commuter school” and made it pretty tough for us commuters. The biggest thing was the lack of “snow days” - I had to drive out there in some pretty treacherous conditions.

But, to be honest, since they were out in the “country” they did have plenty of parking - you just had to be there with plenty of time to catch a bus on to campus.

Now, the University of Akron, they have it pretty bad. Plunked right in the middle of a city. They suffer from what Obsidian spoke of. In fact, there was an article in today’s newspaper about how UA came to be stuffed in the middle of a city.

15

This is one of the small pleasures of being a (smaller) University Security Officer.

Fuck the parking rules. I’ve got better things to do with my time.

I work second shift (3pm-11pm) and we do not bother with enforcing the rules on my shift, except by complaint. Officially, we do not enforce the rules after 4pm, but unofficially, we come on board at 3pm and we’re not about to run around our first hour on shift an ticket/tow vehicles.

Now if you park in someone’s reserved spot, it’s up to them what happens to you. If they want us to ticket you ($25), we will. If they demand that we have you towed out of their spot, we’ll do it. Funny thing is that we use a very expensive tow company and it will cost you more than $300 to get your car back. People tend to flip out when they get towed and find out the cost. But hey, like I said, on my shift it’s generally by complaint only, so we have a bulletproof excuse for why we did it.

Very occasionally, I have to write a ticket for a non-complaint issue. Like the other day when a student drove straight past me and parked in the Faculty lot. Here’s your ticket. No, I didn’t ticket the other 5-6 student vehicles in that lot, but they didn’t drive right past me to park there and I didn’t want to spend the time calling them in. But lucky you, young woman, for driving right past two uniformed security officers and the faculty lot sign, because it cost you $25.

Or the week before when I ticketed another young woman for parking on the sidewalk 5’ from the door of one of our buildings. Hey, I did try to find out who owned the vehicle (checking the registration), so I could call you. I also walked around the public areas of the building and tried to find you. When I couldn’t, I wrote you a ticket. When you came out the door just as I put it on your car, I would have torn it up if you had been the least bit apologetic. But no, you gave me attitude. So you got to keep it. Next time try not to be a jerk…and don’t park on the sidewalk.
Otherwise, per the OP, we’re in the middle of the city and our parking generally sucks. We run an annual lottery for parking permits. Those that do not win get to park in the surrounding neighborhood, where I am sure that the residents are happy to have every available inch of street in front of their houses covered with student parking. Fortunately for us, the University OWNS half the neighborhood, so many of those people are in fact, student renters.

The University has looked at building a ramp, but the quoted price was $10k per spot. So a 100 spot parking ramp comes in at $1 million, a 500 spot ramp at $5 mil. The other option is to tear down some of those surrounding houses and build more parking lots, but that really isn’t cost effective either, and it requires permission from the city, rezoning and neighborhood approval. (In other words, it ain’t gunna happen.)

16

Couldn’t have been Berkeley. Berkeley hasn’t got enough parking to let faculty park there. There are some spots for Nobel prize winners, and a few that the ASUC voted themselves, and a few other random spots, but on the whole you’d better walk or something, 'cause you’re not parking.

17

My alma mater recently (as in, the construction took place the entire time I went to school, and opened as soon as I left) built an awesome new building that finally consolidated the registrar, financial aid, etc. There were several open forums held, and surveys passed out, to assess what students wanted in the facility. When the final plans were posted in the school newspaper, whoever wrote the article asked if there were going to be enough parking spaces to accommodate the new facility. The answer given was something to the effect of, “Well, nobody told us in the forums or on the surveys that we needed more parking than we have now, so we didn’t design for it.” :rolleyes:

18

I guess they assume at least 2/3 of the students live on-campus, or close enough to campus that they don’t need to drive to class. Which seems to be a reasonable assumption in most universities I’m familiar with. As for faculty and staff, most of them families, and/or do not work full-time, and therefore have greater need for parking space.

19

Campus parking is fucking retarded. I tried to go up and see a friend of mine last year and there was honestly not a SINGLE FUCKING PUBLIC PARKING SPOT on campus. NOT ONE! My only choice if I didn’t want to break the law was to park at some local business and walk into campus.

20

This takes me back to the good old days and parking woes. For a couple of years I also worked as a security officer on campus while I was going to school. We were a good sized university so I didn’t have that much personal involvement with parking enforcement, which was a separate department. We shared a building and several people had gone between the departments so I heard all the horror stories from the other side.

In Security, we only gave out tickets at night to cars parked in the no parking zones in front of the dorms, which needed to be kept clear for fire zones. One hardass guy loved giving tickets, but I was more laid back. If I saw someone park there, I’d call to them and explain that I was required to ticket unless they moved their car, and pretty much everyone was cool about it. I guess getting a verbal warning was better than the sneak attack from my cow-orker.

One girl refused to believe that the tickets had any consequences. She pulled up in front of me and parked her car, and shrugged off my standard line. So she got a ticket. And another ticket the next night when she was parked in the same place. And another ticket a couple of days later. I wasn’t the only one working and she would collect them from everyone.

It wasn’t until she tried to transfer credit to another school and found out that she had several thousand dollars (in 1984 money!) in outstanding fines and that the university wouldn’t release her transcript until they were paid that she finally understood the system will get you.