Yes, then I will agree, that my decision to hold down a full time job and attend a university that has shitty planners, which for obvious reasons chooses not to advertise their own parking-incompetence, has resulted in my not being able to find a parking place when I arrive an hour early, in an attempt to responsibly attend class. Thank you for allowing to see the truth of who is really to blame here.
You really think ‘And by the way, our parking situation sucks and we sell four times as many parking passes as we have parking spaces’ is featured on the campus tours? I’d be very surprised if most incoming freshman know how much parking will cost them, never mind where or whether they will have the opportunity to actually park.
So let’s do a price comparison? How much feed does your high horse consume daily?
When I was a grad student at UC Santa Cruz, graduate student housing was $800/month. My stipend was $1000/month.
Dorm life isn’t too bad, as long as you don’t have to share a bedroom. But after my last bad roommate experience, I said to myself I would never again share a bedroom until I got married.
But for that $800/month, I would have gotten to share a bedroom with someone I had never met before, and share a bathroom with three other people. By living off campus, I got a room in a house with my own bedroom and bathroom, for half as much money as I would have been paying to live on campus.
Unfortunately, finding housing close enough that I could take a bus wasn’t an option, either- any housing, anywhere and at any price, was hard to find in Santa Cruz at the time, because so many people were moving into the area because of the dot-com boom.
I don’t like driving. I would have preferred to live on campus. But I don’t dislike driving as much as I dislike having no personal space, the way you do when you share a bedroom with someone you didn’t pick out and who might have a lifestyle that’s not particularly compatible with yours.
I’m not bitching about the lack of spaces, although I could. I have no problem with parking at the back of the lot and walking. Usually there’s a space there. It’s the problem of getting from the lot to school that I’d like dealt with.
I live about 2 miles from school, a little closer since I moved. I can walk there, and I did it the last summer session before I finished my undergrad degree.(I’m a grad student now). It’s about a 45 walk. I’d drive on Tuesday and Thursday anyway because my first class is at 8, then after a break, I teach til 9. Paranoid or not, I’d rather not make that walk twice a week in the dark. I have to go take a test or I’d explain my point further.
-Lil
Tennessee’s website says the ratio for commuter parking is 1.85 permits for every space. Link.
The idea is basically, “Not every student will be on campus at any given time, therefore the university doesn’t need a parking space for every pass issued.”
I dealt with that parking for several years and I can say the situation improved a bit with the big garage across from the Hill. UT’s campus was never designed to handle the vast amount of automobile traffic imposed on it and the space it has to work with is minimal. Nowadays I think the problem isn’t so much “Not enough parking” as it is “Not enough convenient parking.” It ain’t Hooterville Tech Auto-Diesel. It’s wedged between a river and hills.
That being said, I learned to be very creative with my parking habits. There’s a lot of technically illegal parking to be had if you can find it and don’t mind paying the occasional parking ticket.
Frankly, at UT, it’s cheaper to pay a few parking tickets than get an actual parking tag.
ladyfoxfyre, down your path lies Phoenix. (The worst city in the world)
Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ve been there. It was hotter than hades and I almost melted even though it was 3 am and I only went outside long enough to smoke a cigarette.
OK, it’s late to the thread, but that made me smile.