It was ironic that I was asked to write a piece on parking, to say the least. I am one of those people who lives in fear of having nowhere to park and subsequently never being able to find my car once I have found it a temporary home wherever I have gone.
I deal with parking at both the Downtown and West campuses each week, and boy, do I have a lot to say about those situations.
When I started at the Downtown campus I harassed everyone I could find about parking, from my co-workers at The Times to strangers in the elevator. Considering no one gave me any type of brochure or website to consult, I had virtually no idea of what my options were.
I finally decided that my best bet would be to park at the Bradley Center structure and pay with parking stamps. This way I would have the skywalk at my disposal and what I consider to be a low rate to pay.
This situation worked really well for me until last week, when I was informed upon entry that MATC spots were filled and I would have to pay full price to park there. Okay, I thought to myself, I guess that’s how it goes.
But lo and behold, when I reached the MATC spots, there was one available right there in front of me. I parked in it and went on with my day.
So when I left, I was told that I would have to pay the full price even though MATC spots were available. I questioned the man working the booth as to whether or not they count the number of people leaving so they can consider those spots open once vacated, and he repeatedly told me that he didn’t make the rules.
I still had to pay top price even though an MATC spot was open for me.
I question whether the people operating the structure are taking advantage of their counting system and charging people the full rate even though MATC spots have opened up in the meantime.
Now onto West campus. I spent a great deal of time with Jerry O’Sullivan, Coordinator of Student Life, talking about parking at West campus and even piled into his van for a mini-field trip to survey the parking options students there have. He shared with me an interesting situation that has arisen recently.
Apparently, students at West campus have been squatting in lot #2 and up until now, no one has enforced the rules that prevent us from being there. So we have lost a great deal of parking and as a result, our lots now fill quickly with the extra 80-100 cars that previously were “misparked”.
According to O’Sullivan, West campus “has always had a parking problem” and with the campus having all-time high attendance for the past three years, “we are a small ship with a lot of people aboard”.
He suggests several options, the most logical to be renting the existing empty parking lot adjacent to lot #2 from the 1135 S. 70th Street building, which would give us approximately 300 more parking spaces. He also mentions the idea of knocking down the A Building and replacing it with a multi-level parking structure.
All I know is that I now live in fear of coming to school and having to park at our overflow lot, four blocks away, because I wasn’t lucky enough to get there just as someone was leaving.
No matter which solutions MATC decides to take to remedy our awful parking situations, one undeniable fact remains:
parking sucks.