The same day the Henderson Street parking garage opened on campus, creating a vertical stack of nearly 600 parking spaces, the University’s Task Force on Campus Sustainability released a report advocating alternative transportation, such as carpooling and public transportation.\nThat the two events occurred on the same day was entirely coincidental – the Henderson Street garage had been planned for nearly three years and the task force had only been established for about 11 months, said Doug Porter, director of IU Parking Operations.\nHowever, it does raise questions about the way the University addresses parking on campus.\nThough Porter said it’s impossible to compare IU’s parking situation to those of other Big Ten schools and IU isn’t looking to change its policies, other universities present a wide range of different parking issues and attempted solutions.
The IU baseline\nIU has about 20,000 parking spaces on campus in five parking garages and hundreds of surface lots. The recent opening of the Henderson Street garage added about 410 parking spaces to what used to be a surface parking lot with only 140 spaces. \nCompeting for those 20,000 parking spaces are about 21,500 IU-permitted vehicles. There are about 8,700 student permits, 10,500 employee and faculty permits and 2,300 permits usable after 5 p.m.\nLast year, IU Parking Operations generated $600,000 from fines, permit sales and meters, which allows all University employees to ride the Bloomington Transit buses for free. Students are able to ride Bloomington Transit buses and campus buses for free because of the transportation fee included with tuition.
Ohio State University\nOhio State University’s 50,000 students make it the largest Big Ten school. It has about 32,000 parking spaces on campus, said Sarah Blouch, director of Transportation and Parking Services at OSU. Of those 32,000 parking spaces, 10,000 are located in the school’s 11 parking garages. \nEven with 32,000 spaces available, Blouch said parking was, in the past, a big problem for OSU. \nThree years ago, OSU stopped selling parking permits to first-year students who lived in the campus dormitories. Blouch said the first-year students in dorms were the fastest growing group of permit consumers and OSU had to consider prioritizing. \nBlouch said implementing this rule immediately helped the school accommodate other students, faculty and staff members who needed parking spaces on campus. To accommodate first-year students, OSU implemented a system called the Zip car.\nOSU’s Zip car system is a car-sharing system where students can go online to reserve one of the 20 mini-vans, pick-up trucks or PT Cruisers for the amount of time they need using a membership card, Blouch said. The cost is $10 to $11 per hour, and it includes gas and maintenance.\nOSU also has six bus routes that operate 19 buses at peak hours, 24 hours a day, Blouch said. \n“You don’t need a car here,” Blouch said.
The University of Iowa\nThe University of Iowa has about 16,000 parking spaces on campus for its about 29,000 students and 14,000 faculty and staff members, said Starr Jennings, administrative assistant at Parking and Transportation for The University of Iowa. \nIn 2007, the university sold about 921 parking permits to students who commute to campus. The total number of “storage” permits sold to keep cars on campus, the main type of permit, was 1,114. Jennings emphasized that these numbers, which total less than 2,000, are not representative of the total number of students driving to or on campus. \nJennings said the majority of the parking spaces available on campus are open to the public and do not require a permit. \nSimilar to IU, Iowa’s students ride the campus buses. In 2007, buses gave 3,617,647 rides. Students who buy a campus bus pass and do not buy a permit to keep their car on campus are rewarded by getting a discounted bus pass. \nIowa also heavily advertises its van-pool program, largely to staff members who live far from campus, Jennings said. The university owns 15-passenger vans that people sign up to drive or ride. The driver rides for free and the riders pay a portion of the gas and maintenance cost for the ride. The cost is subsidized by the university.
Michigan State University\nMichigan State University has about 46,000 students with a total of 24,977 spaces total on campus, said Lynette Forman, parking operations supervisor. There are 9,000 for faculty and staff, 5,128 for students in residence halls and 2,279 spaces reserved for commuter students, Forman said.\nIn the campus’s six parking garages, there are about 5,000 spaces, almost double the number of parking garage spaces at IU.\nSimilar to IU, MSU’s Parking Operations provides free bus passes for university employees to ride the campus bus, called the CATA, or Capital Area Transportation Authority, bus. CATA is the private company that operates Michigan State’s bus system. Students can buy CATA bus campus passes for $45 a semester or passes for every bus route operated by CATA (including city routes) for $14 a month.
Apples to oranges\nComparing IU to other Big Ten schools yields more differences than similarities, Porter said. \nHe said if he attempted to implement a ban on first-year students buying parking permits it would not be feasible or practical. The lots across the street from Briscoe Quad, McNutt Quad and Forest Quad never fill up and would be largely wasted if not used by students, Porter said.\nPorter referenced Northwestern University’s restrictive policies on granting permits to students or faculty who live within a designated “walking zone.” Porter said Northwestern is able to generally discourage driving to campus because it is located in an urban area with limited parking space. IU just isn’t the same, Porter said.\nNonetheless, in the transportation section of the task force’s sustainability report, it states that the “beautiful, pedestrian-friendly campus core” will fail to sustain if a high percentage of students and staff continue to drive to campus.\nIf the task force’s report has any impact, the current status quo will change.\nIf it does, Buff Brown of Bloomington Transportation Options for People has a suggestion.\n“Universities that are doing the right thing are holding the line on parking and they’re putting their resources into other forms of transportation,” Brown said. “The most important thing is that you have to take those resources and put them into alternatives so people can still successfully get to work and afford to get to work, and that it helps the city and the University.”
