General University Area Updates and Rumours

[ijmorlan]

As a current UW student. Parking is a nightmare. Not only is it expensive, it’s far away (and any lots that are even remotely close to where you’re going are completely full)

The lack of parking garages at the university is crazy. Raze all the surface lots and put things that are actually worthwhile on them. So much surface parking in such an urban area is ridiculous

Parking at the University is severely mismanaged. On the one hand, there is a lot which is always free next to Seagram LRT station; of course, at busy times, it fills up and you can’t actually park there at all. On the other hand, parking in most of the on-campus visitor lots is a flat fee for the entire day. So you can park at 07:00, pay $6, and stay there all day and into the evening, including through the period of time when the lot is full despite the $6 fee; or you can show up at 18:00 when the lot is emptying out, and you still need to pay $6 to park for a couple of hours in an empty lot. Meanwhile, employees can pay a risibly low monthly fee to park all day every day; but if they only need a couple of days a week (maybe transit is convenient 3 days a week, but the other days they need to pick up kids from an after-school activity or something) they get no discount.

They should just implement SFPark for almost all parking and get rid of the monthly passes and special deals.

Also if the President wants to announce that Donna Strickland gets a special parking space, the President’s office should pay for it, not the Faculty of Science. But that’s just an amusing minor quibble compared to the serious issues mentioned above.