Volume 140, Issue 2 Wednesday, August 25, 2021 utdailybeacon.com @utkdailybeacon
‘FIX THE DAMN PARKING’
Students see a ‘parking crisis,’ parking staff sees a ‘crisis of education’ DANIEL DASSOW CAMPUS NEWS EDITOR
Perhaps the pandemic made us forget what it meant to be on campus with nearly 30,000 other students. Perhaps too many people who could have walked to their first day of class decided to drive instead. Or perhaps, with one of the largest student populations in UT history, we have simply arrived at a breaking point. But whatever the explanation, most students who have a car on campus agree: parking during the first three days of the 2021-2022 school year was a mess. With central garages full as early as 7:30 a.m., various students have reported driving in circles for over an hour, missing their first class or even parking downtown and walking to campus. On the r/UTK subreddit, complaints about parking became so commonplace this week that a student dryly titled their post “Another Another Parking(and Bus) Post.” Another student, a sophomore named Nadia Tippett, went so far as to write a
petition on Change.org titled, “Help STOP the University of Tennessee Parking Crisis.” Since it was posted last week, the petition has gained around 1,800 signatures and support for the petition continues to rise. “Complaints from students across campus is actually what prompted me to write the petition,” Tippett said. “Many of the Ag Campus students in particular voiced their concerns. Walking can take them up to 40 minutes and many people can’t afford to use the LINK services in town.” In her petition, Tippett called for the campus to get rid of the designation between non-commuter and commuter parking passes and to no longer charge non-commuting students over $100 more than commuting students for their passes. She also called on the university to provide “readily available, accessible to all, student parking at a fair, universal rate,” which she believes would entail the construction of a new parking garages. The staff at UT Parking and Transit Services are accustomed to such petitions and to the complaints that roll in every year at this time, when more students drive to campus and attend class
than at any other point in the year. Moira Bindner, communications and customer service manager for Parking and Transit, said that her office has been working to expand parking opportunities for students, including new daytime commuter parking at Fraternity Park lots and perimeter parking at Church Street United Methodist on Henley Street. When asked if there was a parking crisis, Bindner reframed the issue. “There is a get-to-know-wherethe-parking-areas-are crisis,” Bindner said. “There is a crisis of education.” Even though this year’s issues seem to be more acute, Parking and Transit has a few unmovable facts in their arsenal, facts that they believe more students need to know. For one thing, they are an auxiliary unit which operates mainly off of permit and special events revenue and is not funded by the university. For another, campus is landlocked and there are few places to put more parking. Most striking, however, is the price tag for a new garage, which hovers around $25,000 per parking space. Some of the issues Tippett brought up are being addressed by parking services. The large Neyland commuter garage
now has live availability counters to let students know how many spaces are left. While they are given to occasional inaccuracies, these counters, which are also featured at the Terrace Avenue Garage and the Volunteer Boulevard Garage, give live updates on the parking and transit website and on the Tennessee app. Parking and Transit also added a new T Bus route this year called the “Ag Express,” which runs to the infamously far Ag campus every six to eight minutes from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. But students have taken issue with more fundamental aspects of parking at UT, such as the ratio of permits to spaces, which caps at 1.85 permits per commuter space and 1.2 permits per noncommuter and staff space. These ratios are the result of calculations about how many students and staff are typically on campus at one time. Bindner said her office has not had to reach the maximum number of permits this year.
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