Finding a parking spot on campus is
not an easy thing to do. Many students pay $70 bucks or so a semester to
have a parking pass. Unfortunately, it seems that UWW is lacking parking. For
students going to class, the best options are the Center of the Arts, Upham,
Hyland, and Heidi parking lot. These parking lots have parking pass and
metered sections. Parking on the street is an option if you have an 8 am class
and arrive before all the spots are gone or if you get lucky later in the day. Parking
spots in Heidi and Upham are rare unless you drive around and stalk for fifteen
minutes. I have found that it took me longer to get to class when I drove and
had to find a spot then when I walked. Many days I found my parking pass
useless because there were no spots to be found. There were countless days that
I had to dig out my change to plug a meter even though I did pay for a parking
pass.
Another common dilemma occurs when a
student with a parking pass is running late. They do not have time to drive
around ten minutes looking for a spot. So the student plugs the meter for
as long as the limit. Unfortunately, the meter runs out during the last twenty
minutes of class and the student returns to find a ticket. This feeling sucks!
I personally feel that the Heidi side of campus needs more parking. Finding
parking when going to the Health Center or Roseman building for an appointment
is terrible. If your appointment is mid-day do not bother wasting your time
looking for a spot just park by the volleyball nets be the gym.
Another problem area is the area of
Hyer and the Library. It would be nice to have somewhere to park when you have
to run into the financial aid office quick or drop off a check at the cashier’s
office. I bet if there was easy access to the library even more people would
use the library. I will be walking to class next semester and avoiding the
stress of finding a parking spot.
It is sad that with all the stresses
of being a college student, finding a parking spot before class was a main one.
Yeah screw the parking passes.
ReplyDeleteKudos for deciding to walk instead.
What I think would be neat is if students who lived the closest to campus paid the most for a parking pass. When you live two blocks away but still have a parking pass, it's a luxury, so you should pay more. If you live two miles from campus, then it's a different story and you should be able to get a pass and KNOW that there is a spot available for you at a reasonable distance from campus.
I used to have a pass and I live about three blocks from campus. By the time I would drive, find a spot in the only lots that ever really had spaces available (which were always far away from my class), and walk to my class, it'd take almost the same amount of time had I just walked in the first place. So I said screw paying for the pass when it's really not beneficial, and I walked almost every day this past year (if I didn't have time to walk the whole way or just didn't want to walk for some reason, I'd park on a side street closer to campus, or I'd carpool with someone).
Oh poor me. I cannot find a parking spot. Now I have to walk.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about just having to walk... it's the fact that you buy the pass so you don't have to walk far or take a long time getting to your class. But since the parking passes basically have no value (yet they cost a shitload) since it's impossible to find a close spot, and the open spots are located so far from campus, it's pointless to purchase a pass in the first place. Which is why more students should be aware of the fact that if they have to walk 20 minutes to get to campus, they should just opt for walking instead of wasting money on a pass. And the days when they're really in a bind, they can spring for the meter parking or whatever.
DeleteI hear a lot of complaining but few solutions aside from charging more for the people who live on campus. Nice idea, but not necessarily a fix as it could just lead to people simply paying for the higher cost and still no more space than before.
ReplyDeleteThe big problem the campus has is that it is growing, but it is enclosed on all sides. There is very few places to spread out. What they almost need to do is build up/down instead of trying to build left/right. Whether a parking garage is feasible due to the crossing of electrical wires/tubes/etc going all over the place is beyond my technical understanding. Also one would have to wonder if a parking garage would stick out like a sore thumb visually on campus.
So besides changing the parking ticket prices and adding a parking garage, what other option would the campus have to fix the problem?