A few words about parking and school closings

As most of you know, parking at the West Broad Street Deck has become hard to find. It has become particularly harder, in fact, for residents of the West Broad Street Student Apartments to find parking because this year, parking has been restricted to levels five and six of the deck. Recently, I was pulling out of the West Broad Street Deck (well, I was making my way out of the deck, driving through the levels) and I saw something that reaffirmed my belief of commuter drivers that drive to this school: many of them can’t drive. I was driving carefully, as always suggested in parking garages, and while turning I saw a commuter student barreling toward me. When this person saw me, he slammed his brakes. This actually happened several times as I was leaving. It is because of this that I propose the following: VCU parking should move commuter students to the Bowe Street deck and allow for residents of the West Broad apartments and some faculty to park in the West Broad deck. It would be safer and allow for more parking spaces for West Broad apartments residents.

Last weekend, a huge snow and sleet storm hit the Richmond area that closed everything Monday. On Tuesday though, the VCU administration decided to have a delayed opening because they must have thought all streets were clear. As it turns out, there were tons of icy patches along Broad Street, and many commuter students couldn’t get their cars out of parking lots and down many side streets that have still not been cleared even as this article goes to print. The administration should have considered this factor and given everyone another day off. It would have been better and safer for everyone. Hopefully in the future, both the administration and the folks at the parking and transportation department will think through their decision, look at factors of safety and not what they think is best before they make the decisions to cancel school (or not to cancel school) and allow for residents of the West Broad apartments to have more places to park. Only time will tell…

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