Baylor University hired CEG to do a study on campus parking. One recommendation was to charge faculty and staff for parking. This created an uproar on campus from, guess who, faculty and staff. The problem was that the university was taking with one hand and giving with another. They were going to give a raise to the faculty and staff in an amount equal to the parking fees. Read all about it here.
The editorial from the student newspaper is a bit confusing but I think their point is, that if you are going to motivate people to take the bus or ride a bike, how can you do it when you add charges and then give the chargees a raise to cover the charges.
I haven’t read the CEG report but I think I know who wrote it and if the goal was to reduce the number of cars trying to park on campus, I find it hard to believe that the report didn’t also recommend raising the student fees, too.
That way, everyone would be in the same boat and be motivated by good old greed to reduce their trips to campus.
This is unrelated to Baylor, but I have always thought that charges on campuses should be for each “Trip” and not just for a quarter, semester, or year. Students would be motivated to get their classes on the same days so they wouldn’t have to come to campus every day, Staff would have similar motivations. The charges might be pennies a trip, but they would add up and over a period of time, the amount one pays would be substantially reduced.
The motivation would be to carpool, plan trips carefully, and think about the problem and work on solutions.
Just saying
JVH
