Gold, silver, red, blue and additional options, parking is a source of pain for many at the University of Idaho. One of the issues that many students face is not finding a good place to park.
“The biggest issue this year is that there’s been a big increase in first-year students,” Director of Parking and Transportation Rebecca Couch said. “We’re seeing more freshman park, so there’s more on-campus student residents, bringing vehicles to campus than previously.”
UI has seen an increase of first-year students that have caused more strain on parking. Couch stated that this had been a trend for the past several years.
“We did sell out all of our on-campus residents student permits this fall, and that includes silver, purple and economy,” Couch said. “So the issue has been that there are still during the month of September and October, they’re still students who haven’t got a permit yet.”
Speaking with students, some had issues of there not being a place to park or no guarantee of a parking space.
“I live right across the street from one of the purple lots and it’s always full. So unless it’s like the weekend or something that people are out, it’s always full,” Conner Mason said. “You’re paying like a couple hundred bucks for not a guaranteed spot. Why even bother? I just park off campus.”
UI student Ryan Hart shared similar frustrations. Hart chose to look for an apartment closer to be able to walk to UI and avoid paying for an expensive pass.
“Certain times you’re looking for a spot (longer) then it would take for just us to walk,” Curtis Zylstra said. “I don’t know if I save any time walking from the other side of the Kibbie Dome to class than I do for my apartment.”
Couch did discuss the issue of students not having permits as the school year has started.
“They’re still students who haven’t got a permit yet. They’re either they just bought a car or they just brought their car from home,” Couch said. “Somehow they just now decided they needed a permit. But they’re coming in and now asking for a permit and we don’t have one, and that’s been the problem.”
Every fall, Parking and Transportation Services measure open spots available around campus. These surveys help to drive changes and decisions made when it comes to parking.
“Just in the residential, the key times are at 6 o’clock in the morning and 8 o’clock at night,” Couch said. “6 o’clock in the morning is the really telling one, because that’s generally when most people are parked. 8 o’clock at night, they’re still out and about.”
Nez Perce Drive purple parking was modified to offer more spaces to handle this. Couch stated that due to lowered demand for the purple pass on Nez Perce allowed for availability to create more places to park.
“It’s not an amazing option for many, because of housing, you’d have to walk across campus, but at least they have a place to store their car,” Couch said.
Looking for ways to add more parking spaces, there was a proposed option to get rid of the economy lot next to the Kibbie Dome, changing its available to other colored passes. However, there hasn’t been much development in this plan, as there are plans to keep the lot open for event parking.
“It’s challenging. The Kibbie Dome parking lot is desire to be used by events parking only,” Couch said. “The university desires to have even more events on campus than football games, they want to have conferences, community events and they want to pack the parking lot to make it very successful.”
Couch stated that they are working on a program to allow those parked there to move successfully.
“We’ve only had five to fifteen cars that have not moved out for each of the events,” Couch said. “Which is really good when we’re talking about 220 students moving their cars.”
Discussing the possibility of being oversold, Couch stated that Parking and Transportation Services is not.
“I mean, we’re not oversold on residential permits,” Couch said. “A very, very small amount in silver. There’s always availability, even when we sell over about by 20 permits or so.”
One of the goals for Parking and Transportation Services is to help students get the word out sooner of permits being for sale. Currently, parking permits are sold on July 1.
“Our message moving forward is going to be a parking permit is not guaranteed and is most definitely not going to be guaranteed Aug. 1,” Couch said.
Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @DVR_Tweets