EDITORIAL: Time to decide alternative parking on campus
It's time to stop putting off a permanent solution to the parking situation on campus.
For years, Central Michigan University students and faculty have been boiling over about a lack of parking. Just yesterday, a CMU student tweeted: "CMU commuter parking lot is a joke! #soannoyed." And we agree.
Kim Speet, CMU Parking Services Office Manager, said the office will issue almost 13,000 parking permits this academic year, despite there being only 11,140 spaces on campus. That's 16 percent more permits than spots. When you issue more permits than spaces, you are asking for a crowded, frustrated campus community.
Instead, the university should reassess the idea of building a parking garage on campus. It only takes common sense to recognize that when there are more parking permits than spots, the university must either acquire more land away from the main campus (which seems unlikely and of questionable usefulness), or build up.
Of course the university and community could fund and encourage more mass-transportation options, but for the moment, transportation needs a fix in the near future, not a long-term transformation.
The idea of a parking garage has been mooted in the past for being an expensive eyesore. But a concrete structure is a substantially more attractive propisition than the endless expanses of asphalt that currently occupy a majority of the open spaces on campus.
When it comes to cost, the construction of a relatively inexpensive parking garage that would benefit a majority of students seems obvious when compared to the College of Medicine or the RFOC's planned $1.5 million Mongolian barbecue addition. The structure might not be architecturally appealing, but sometimes utility trumps artistic design and it can't be any worse-looking than the previously mentioned lots.
The structure could even begin to pay for itself immediately. A garage would offer spaces protected from the elements, and a permit for the garage could come with a revenue-raising additional fee.
Campus has long been in need of a large-scale transportation overhaul and a new parking garage would mark a substantial step in the right direction.
The parking situation has to be dealt with before pedestrian, bicycle and traffic issues can be adequately addressed.
A school trying to raise its reputation and performance to the next level should be willing to raise its parking as well.
