Parking for Students to Be Eliminated

At the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee meeting Wednesday, officials discussed recommendations from Provost Robert Shelton and Vice Chancellor for Finance Nancy Suttenfield that address campus parking problems, which will worsen with the implementation of the University's Development Plan.

The plan details campus growth for the next eight to 10 years.

"There is no option that (resident) student parking will be eliminated," said Assistant Provost Linda Carl. "The decision has been made."

The recommended parking plan would not affect married student housing, hardship parking or student commuter parking.

The committee has been given the responsibility of developing a way to implement the provost's decision to eliminate resident parking.

"Parking is a horrible, horrible problem here," Shelton said. "This is not an easy decision."

There currently are 480 spaces available for resident students. In four years almost half of those will have to be eliminated due to construction.

"In 2005, 237 spaces are lost already in the Hinton James (Residence Hall) area," said Derek Poarch, director of the Department of Public Safety.

The remaining 243 student spaces will be allocated to employees. It will be the committee's decision exactly how and when those spaces are eliminated.

Shelton said that although resident student parking is important, there are many employees who have been here 10 or 15 years without having a parking space.

Resident students still will be allowed to park in the off-campus PR lot, which will be expanded.

Shelton also said the new fare-free busing system, to be implemented in January, should help parking problems.

The options for implementation include immediate withdrawal of spaces or a gradual phasing out.

The phasing-out option would begin in 2003-04 with resident sophomores not being allowed to park on campus. Another class would not be able to park on campus each year so that all resident spaces would be eliminated by 2006-07. If this plan is adopted, the 2002-03 freshmen class will never be able to park on campus as residents.

Shelton would not say whether student resident parking would be reinstated once development is complete, but he said that with more spaces brought by the addition of new parking decks, an end to the parking crunch is promising.

"We're going to see a decline in spaces, then we'll recover with the new decks," he said.

Other issues that will have to be addressed in order to meet the needs of the Development Plan are night parking and permit pricing.

Shelton said the growth on campus has forced the administration to set new priorities for parking.

He said, "We decided that this is a luxury that we can no longer afford."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.