As parking permit costs have increased by almost $20 per semester since last year, ASUU brought university officials together on March 23 to speak with students about parking issues they have.
Andrew King, the director of construction projects with the University of Utah, and Collin Simmons, the executive director of auxiliary services, addressed questions on permit prices, parking fines and the future of parking infrastructure. The conversation comes amid increased permit costs and the university’s acquisition of Fort Douglas, which Simmons said will yield more than 1,000 new parking stalls.
Permits
The panelists took a number of questions on parking permits. Questions from students, such as Milan Venegas, who asked why the prices of permits have gone up by almost $20 per semester since last year. “That was approved ultimately by the Board of Trustees as they look at the future of parking, and the need to build more infrastructure because it’s an auxiliary operation, that is what the permit prices were set at,” Simmons said. “I guess the economics of it is that was the way the pro formas for parking in the future and the system is built upon those numbers.”
Additional questions from Josh Hilberg, a Quantitative Analysis of Markets & Organizations (QAMO) major, focused on the cost of parking tickets. “The way the fines are set up, they need to be expensive enough to deter people or encourage behavior change to either one, pay for a visitor session or two, or have a permit,” Simmons said.
However, the panelists also mentioned a program where offenders can take a class to waive one parking ticket per semester. “One non-monetary option would be the ticket diversion program, where each semester, you can sign up and have a ticket waived by taking classes.”
Balance
King said that ultimately, the parking situation at the U, especially looking into the future, is a balancing act. “This campus is growing really exponentially, year over year,” King said. “We are adding hundreds, if not thousands, of additional students. So, we are growing, and in order to accommodate that growth, there’s a lot of additional infrastructure needed. That’s new classroom buildings, new labs, new faculty offices, new parking facilities, it’s all sorts of new things.” King added that while there are plans to increase parking, it’s not something that can happen overnight. Where students are able to park can determine their entire routine, meaning there’s a lot of planning needed.
King said that as a major cluster of people in Utah, the U of U, which sits on just over 1,500 acres, needs to balance space for parking with space for everything else. “If you include faculty, students, staff, visitors, patients and neighborhood kids who come up here, we’re 70 to 80,000 people on any given day during the typical academic year. We are not even a small city in Utah. We’re like the 15th largest city in the State of Utah,” King said. “If you can imagine that many people in a relatively small area, we have to have balance.”
