With roughly 14,000 spots but more than 21,000 students and faculty, that leaves 7,000 people who might potentially call the parking department any given day to complain.
In response, Director of Parking and Transportation Mike Harris said the matter can be summed up into three words.
“Enough, cheap and convenient,” Harris said. “You can pick two, but you’ll never get all three … and we have every combination on this campus.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t have a few tricks up his sleeve. In fact, the department has several projects in the works for the 2017-2018 school year, starting with the change in cost of each type of permit.
Residential permits will rise to $250, commuter to $200 and Park-n-Ride to $100. But perhaps the biggest difference is the price of permits for the parking garage attached to The Pavilion.
“We’re going to lower the price of the garage from $550 to $400,” Harris said. “It’s going to be all reserved spaces, and the gates are going away.”
Students who currently hold permits for the parking garage are thrilled.
Junior journalism major Alexandra Morris said she cannot wait for the transition, after experiencing numerous flaws in the garage’s gate system. Morris said she’s been frustrated with long lines of cars backed up trying to exit the garage and the occasional broken gate, but she admits she still has her reservations about seeing them go.
“I don’t know how they’re going to enforce that,” Morris said. “The gates are brutal, but all they’ll be able to do is give a ticket if someone is in there without a permit, and that’s a spot I still can’t park in.”
One thing that isn’t going away is the $5 fee for contesting a ticket.
If you protest any ticket and the citation is waived, you have nothing to worry about, but if you appeal a ticket and your request is denied, the $5 fee will still be assessed to your pre-existing citation, something that many permit holders find to be unfair.
“I think it is unreasonable for students to pay that fee,” junior business major Maddy Young said. “One of the main reasons they’re fighting it is because they can’t afford to pay the actual ticket in the first place.”
Regardless of students’ opinions of the fee, Harris said it is here to stay.
Students and faculty can still look forward to other changes, however, like the development of a carpool system.
“We’re going to have a carpool parking area on campus,” Harris said. “You can come in with two or more people and park in this carpool area.”
The goal of the carpool area is to encourage students to share a ride to campus and leave additional spaces open for other students.
This zone will be located just west of The Pavilion in the lower half of the lot currently zoned for faculty and staff only. It will soon be open to carpoolers with commuter passes and monitored by officers using a camera pointed at the designated lot.
“If our officers see two people get out of the car, then they’re good. … If they see one person get out of that car, it’s not good,” Harris said. “If you have two or more people in that one car, that’s two more spaces open.”
Harris also says the department will eliminate some parallel parking zones on campus by August. The entrance to campus on Rebel Drive and the east side of Sorority Row are on the chopping block.
“We’ve got to get people off of these streets and get them into lots,” Harris said. “Open these streets up for bike lanes and for shuttle stops because it’s becoming a more pedestrian campus.”
As for the bus system, several modifications will be completed by the fall semester.
Current university buses will be getting an updated blue exterior, as well as several new buses being added to the fleet. Buses are also being equipped with Wi-Fi and charging stations.
“We’re trying to get things uniformed … to trademark all of our buses so that they all look the same,” Harris said. “Regardless of the size of the buses, they are all one system.”
Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations, such as LED signs and automated announcements to alert people of the next stop, are being added, along with eight new bus stops to make getting from class to class more convenient.
“We’ll have two buses running counterclockwise and two buses running clockwise,” Harris said. “We have no stop on campus that is more than a four-minute walk from a stop.”
The new buses will seat between 38 and 45 passengers and will run every day solely on campus.
“All of these things that we’re doing, they all work together for the same reason, and that reason is to get the most out of the parking that we have and to try to do it as economically and efficiently as possible.”
This article was submitted to The Daily Mississippian from an advanced reporting class.
