Parking meters are seen on North Lamar Boulevard Monday. (DM Photo/Cady Herring)
Parking meters installed on the Oxford Square will be activated today.
The parking meters will be active from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day except for Sundays from now on.
“The meters will operate at an hourly rate of a dollar per hour,” Oxford Parking Director Matt Davis said. “They’ll run 12 hours a day and roughly 300 days a year.”
When asked why Oxford chose to install parking meters in the Square, Davis said it mainly came down to preventing cars from being left in a Square parking spot all day.
“(The meters) keep the trend of people parking on the Square all day away,” Davis said.
According to Davis, there are now roughly 300 to 315 parking meters installed on the Square. These meters were installed in places that Davis described as “premium, up front spots” within the Square.
Hypothetically, if one were to park on the Square all day during a weekday, they would be able to pay and leave their car all day without issue. However, on a football gameday, that won’t be an option.
“On game day people will be limited to parking on the Square to only three hours at a time,” Davis said.
This rule is in place to prevent people from parking on the Square on a Saturday, heading to the Grove, and then leaving their cars overnight and picking them up on Sunday.
With all of these meters in place, the question of how much revenue the meters will bring in is one that even Davis is not absolutely sure of yet.
“We have a breakdown, we don’t know for sure yet, but we have estimates,” Davis said. “We do know that if all parking spaces with meters are occupied for 50 percent of the year then the revenue that would come from that would be roughly $500,000.”
While the parking meters are expected to keep people from leaving their cars in spots for long periods of time, not everyone is pleased with the new meters.
Morgan Cannon, senior business management major from Greenwood, feels the meters will affect businesses on the Square.
“I don’t like them,” said Cannon, who works as a cashier at Hinton & Hinton. “I feel that people looking to shop along the Square won’t want to have to pay to park there, that they’ll have to spend more time looking for other areas to park and then walk to where they want to go.”
Other students have taken issue with the parking meters as well.
Hayden Poer, freshman business administration and management major from Madison, does not like the idea of having to pay to park on the square but can see why it is being done.
“I really don’t like it, but at the same time the money that’s being made is obviously going to the city to make improvements, so that I can understand,” Poer said. “I think it’s kind of ridiculous that on game days people will only be able to park for three hours at a time. That just doesn’t seem right.”
While some people are displeased with the thought of having to pay to park on the Square, Davis feels people will still have numerous places to park without paid meters.
“We actually still have a variety of free lots,” Davis said.
The lots Davis listed that won’t require payment to park around the Square included a lot by the Oxford University Club, two lots behind Oxford City Hall, a lot behind Old Venice Pizza Co., as well as multiple lots along 14th Street.
Parking meters can be paid with cash, coins or cards.
-Will Crockett
