A student’s worst fear is to arrive to school 20 to 30 minutes before class and not find a parking spot.
Many times throughout the school week, a student only needs about five to 10 minutes to park and get to class, but not on Tuesdays and Thursdays from around 9:30-10:50 a.m. There are 2,752 students who are enrolled in 9:30 to 10:50 a.m. classes on Tuesday and Thursday. There are 2,263 enrolled in 12-1:20 p.m. classes on Tuesday and Thursday.
Statistics show that 30 percent of students who are in 9:30 to 10:50 a.m. classes and 12:00 to 1:20 p.m. classes stay on campus during the dead hour break so they do not leave their parking spots.
This means that 826 students from the 9:30 to 10:50 a.m. classes stay on campus the entire time during dead hour. There are 1,437 students coming to campus for their 12:00-1:20 p.m. classes who will need to find parking spots.
Now let’s compare the amount of students at the peak of needing parking spots to the actual amount of parking spots on campus.
There are a total of 2,484 parking spots designated for students that are commuting to school. This number does not supply enough parking spots for the students going to 9:30 to 10:50 a.m. classes but does supply enough parking spots for students going to 12:00-1:20 p.m. classes.
Tech thinks that there are enough spots for every student to park, but this is not the reality.
The total number of parking spots on the entire campus is 4,923, which includes student parking, dorm parking, faculty and staff parking and other parking.
The total number of parking passes issued for the 2011 fall semester is 9,156.
Obviously, not every person issued a parking pass is on campus every hour of every day, but even if one person over the 4,923 parking spot count needs a spot, then they will not be able to find one and they will be fined because they choose to park in a non-designated parking spot.
Last year there was $160,614 made from the University from fining students for parking in the wrong spots. Tech is making money off students choosing to go to class and risking getting a fine as opposed to skipping class and leaving campus all together because they could not find a proper parking spot.
It’s a huge contradiction when you purchase a parking permit, but there are not enough parking spots during certain times of the day.
School is stressful enough. Let’s not add to the stress by not having access to the proper amount of parking.
One way to fix this is to add parking spaces via parking lots or a parking garage. I know they are expensive, but Tech could spend less money paying the tech police to drive around fining students.
Another way that other colleges solve the issue is to tell freshmen that they cannot drive until they are sophomores.
Here at Tech, this would open around 1,401 parking spots for commuters. Either way something needs to be done because Tech is growing every year.
In our conclusion we found that there are many more parking passes issued for students than they allow parking spots for.
