The University of Texas at El Paso had a problem. They had chaos in their parking operations. So they put in place a plan to sell permits. They sold about 8500 permits for 9200 spaces. So far so good. However they then proceeded to hold a "grace period" for the first week of the semester. And what happened? Chaos continued to reign. Read about it here.
I have never understood this. You put a new program in place, and then you give people the opportunity to not use the program and continue the problem. As the woman in the story said — "I think its awful." Now we don’t know what was "awful." It could have been that she had to pay and didn’t have a space, or that the new program was in effect but chaos still reigned, or that she hadn’t heard about the new program and parking was as it always had been.
My feeling is that if you are going to make a rule, you enforce it or you don’t make the rule. By giving people an "out" you are simply bringing more problems on yourself and the system.
Hopefully UTEP is enforcing now and the problems are slowly unwinding.
JVH
