Thursday, October 20, 2016
Battle royale
ST TRAFFIC T R IM O W E
The fight for a Cal Poly parking space
R FO According to Chief Hughes, the peak traffic times are from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
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PARKING WOES | Many Cal Poly students say it has been troublesome to arrive early to school in order to find a parking spot. longer walk to central campus. “The best advice is that if they are coming at those peak hours, they are literally wasting their time circling around,” Hughes said. “They also need to plan their travels; if they are going to be 30 minutes late to class because they can’t find a parking space then probably leave a little earlier or park in the outlining lots.” While Parking Services can’t create a new parking lot, they are monitoring parking and want students to understand that walking 10 minutes to class is to be expected. “Parking is a limited resource on campus; it’s not going to be convenient,” Hughes said. “We are having discussions right now on possibly restricting first-year student parking.”
Students have taken note of the vacant staff spots that are seen throughout the day. However, Parking Services does not have the jurisdiction to convert staff spots into general spots. “Faculty and staff parking is bargained, rates are bargained and the number of spaces was an agreement we have reached with the unions,” Hughes said. “There are times when you will see vacant faculty and staff lots or spaces, but we have to have a certain number of those for faculty and staff.” This year, there are 2782 general spots and 1581 staff spots. Parking Ser vices understands the needs of students and wants to ease their stress in finding parking with the Parkmobile App. Parkmobile is a mobile ap-
plication that allows the campus community to pay for the meter through their phone at all campus meter locations. In addition, users are alerted 15 minutes before the time expires so they have the chance to extend their parking transaction. This feature is only available for meters and parking lots that do not have maximum time limits. After two years of conducting research, Parking Services took note of the app’s convenience and evaluated its favorability on other campuses. At Cal Poly, it is available for every campus meter. After creating an account and registering your vehicle, the app can be used anywhere that Parkmobile is compatible. “We have been looking at the technology for a couple of years,” Cramer said. “Stanford,
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USC and UCLA all have Parkmobile and there were good results from those institutions.” The Parkmobile app was implemented on Sept. 22. As of Oct. 4., there have been 928 sessions. Additionally, the Master Plan will have an effect on parking. However, Parking Services has already taken that into consideration, especially with the proposal to have all freshmen and sophomores on campus as part of the master planning process. “If you look at the Master Plan, new residential facilities [will be built] and new parking structures will be assigned to those,” Hughes said. “Because if more parking is taken away for more resident halls then obviously we need to start replacing it with more parking structures.”
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With recent construction and an increased number of freshmen, Cal Poly students are once again battling it out for parking spots. Despite popular belief, this is not solely due to a lack of parking spots, but also an increase in on-campus traffic. University Chief of Police George Hughes said there is still plenty of parking on campus to accommodate for the loss of the parking on Grand Avenue where Student Housing South is being constructed. Additionally, Parking Services changed the K-1 parking lot behind the red bricks from resident-only parking to general parking, adding 400 spaces to accommodate for the loss of almost 1,300 spots due to Student Housing South. However, there are just under 8,000 total spots to accommodate more than 25,000 students, faculty and staff. Agricultural communications senior Mika Mercado was late to class three times in the first few weeks of school because of parking trouble. “My parking situation is definitely not a happy one,” Mercado said. “I knew that parking would be bad this year with the construction and what not, but the fact that I come 45 minutes to an hour before class just to wander the lots and find nothing is kind of a little irritating.” However, this is to be expected, according to Associate Director of University Parking Services Marlene Cramer. “I think we need to expect at peak times of the day we are going to have traffic; our road capacity is limited,” Cramer said. “Outside people are also coming onto campus; it’s going to be part of how traffic
flows on campus so it will not be as congested as the first week of school.” Students voiced their frustration via Facebook on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Class group pages expressing how parking affected them. “‘Your voice matter’ and ‘we value you’ posters all around campus yet we can’t even find parking to go to the classes we paid for,” architecture senior Adam Newton said via Facebook comments. “If our voices really mattered we’d be able to find parking within a safe walking distance from class.” One student is not only frustrated with the current parking situation, but also believes the problem stems much deeper. “Parking is an issue because it kind of shows that Cal Poly administration, or whoever is in charge of it, is putting their focus on prospective students,” animal science junior Conner Trimm said. “They took out a parking structure in order to build new dorms and a parking structure so it looks like they are focusing more on making money than focusing on the students who are actually here trying to get an education.” However, the response wasn’t all negative. Biology junior Sydney Erin Anderson said that despite parking difficulties, Parking Services has taken steps toward helping students in regards to traffic directors. “On a positive note, the people directing traffic in the mornings for 8 a.m. class have been doing a really good job at keeping the traffic down,” Anderson said. The campus population has grown, yet the roadways have not changed. Hughes suggests students go to either the K-1 or H-1 lots even if it means a
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