Anyone that has attempted to park on campus has endured the struggle of finding a spot close to your class while also giving you a quick exit from the lot.
The debate among students has consistently been which parking area is the best. Many students take a tactical, planned-out approach to deciding which area to park in based on distance to class, the variety of parking options and ease of access.
Do we really need three specific options for commuters and two specific options for residents? The restrictions have led to greater confusion and difficulty for all students trying to navigate both campuses.
It makes more sense to have designated lots for residents, faculty, staff, commuters and visitors that are not specifically divided into subgroups. Let people park where it’s convenient, not just the area that they were locked into choosing at the start of the semester.
Virginia Tech has implemented this parking structure, and it has worked to near perfection. Each student, staff and faculty member receive a hanging parking pass labeled as either resident, commuter, or faculty/staff. At every parking area on campus, signs display which passes can park there.
This allows for students to freely choose the area they park in rather than be confined to the same inconvenient parking accommodations for the entire semester. As a former student at Virginia Tech, I never had trouble finding a spot where I needed to park.
The commuter students I met at Tech never complained about parking. Granted, many students there ride bikes to school from their off-campus housing rather than driving.
Regardless, there are benefits to having options open for students to choose from which makes ensuring the availability of parking spaces in specific lots consistently possible. This even helps to create the proper flow of traffic throughout campus and prevents gridlock in tight parking decks.
The heart of the parking issue at KSU has always been the attempt to fit thousands of vehicles into lunchbox-sized parking decks and lots. I don’t see this issue going away anytime soon, so in the meantime, we just have to deal with it as best we can.
For those of us that have to continue the struggle, an open-choice parking policy is worth looking into. We are all tired of dealing with crowded parking decks and long lines that only lead us to the disappointment of not finding a prime spot. We are tired of being confined to only “West Parking” or “Central Parking” when there may be open spots somewhere else.
It should be our freedom to choose where to park at any time, not just at the beginning of the semester.
Comparing KSU, right off of a major interstate in a metropolitan area to rural Blacksburg, VA (a town that exists due to the University; where the longest commute is 20 minutes) is not a good comparison at all.
Im going to date myself by saying this but when I was first at KSU hang tags were used and it worked great. If your preferred location was full you went on to another. You still had the same headache of dealing with limited spaces but you at least had other options other than running the risk of a ticket or having to skip class because you can’t park.