Back to School – Parking Leads the Complaints

Mark takes off his gloves and “MAN UPs”

It’s that time of year again where they dust off the same old campus parking “nightmare” stories that are printed every year in every school paper at every college/university everywhere.  It saddens me that my Alma Mater is still writing about this same exact issue 30+ years after I first read about it when I picked up my first copy of the school paper on my first day on campus. 

 I remember a survey the paper did while I was there in the 70’s wherein they picked several popular destinations (student housing areas, shopping and entertainment spots) and measured the travel time to each from the center of campus.  In order from fastest to slowest overall they discovered that #1 was bicycle, #2 was bus, #3 was walking and a distant #4 was driving your car.  In a couple of cases walking was faster than the bus.

 If ever there was a situation where market rate parking should apply it is on college/university campus’s.  Especially when you consider these 2 lines in the article;  “Your Gator 1 Card, for instance, will allow you to get free rides on RTS buses around Gainesville”……..”To promote the use of bikes on campus, UF student government pays for a free bike repair service station next to the Reitz Union.”  My guess is that transit and bicycle use would skyrocket and parking demand would drop to a level more compatible with supply if they simply used what seems like common sense.  Considering that our “best and brightest” are the parking audience in question, you’d think they could figure this problem out.  This is where I would usually say something like “I would expect this at “insert school name here“
University”, but I decided to MAN UP and use my own school as the example.

Mark Rimmer