Permit parking: Good for the Fan, inconvenient for VCU

For residents of the Fan District, finding parking near their homes has become easier. For students, finding unlimited parking in areas of the Fan and Carver neighborhoods adjacent to campus has become more difficult.

The Fan District Association has implemented a two-zone parking permit district. The policy extends the area where permits are required for unlimited parking and the permits are more specific to where a person lives.

Residents living farther west toward Boulevard are permitted to park in zone one, while residents closer to the Monroe Park campus have permits for zone two.

Michael Rohde, parking chair of the Fan District Association, says the intent of the ordinance is to level the playing field for residents who have to compete for parking with students, faculty and staff. He said people who live in the area added to the permit zone have had an easier time parking near their homes.

“Those people did notice a marked difference in availability of parking on the street,” Rohde said.

Rohde says extending the permit-required area has been successful and, by January, more blocks are likely to be added to the permit zones.

Rohde says VCU’s parking resources have not kept up with the growth in the student body.

“If you were to take a map of the available parking over the last five years, it appears that VCU has added parking decks,” Rohde said. “Then you subtract from there the losses (of parking spots) as they build more structures . and add to that the increase in students each year is about 2,000 … They haven’t kept pace with the student needs.”

Rohde says the university should invest in more parking decks and satellite lots that would have shuttle service to take people to campus.

Associate vice president of business services for VCU Paul Jez, oversees on-campus parking. He says satellite lots are being used on the medical campus and there have been discussions about using more.

“We’ve also looked at . trying to find satellite lots further off campus that you could park 500 or 1,000 cars that could be secured,” Jez said.

However, he said students have expressed little interest in this idea and there are few properties in the area that could support a satellite lot.

Art education major Jessica McClaire said satellite lots might be a good solution, but she recognizes not all students would want to rely on the buses to shuttle them to campus.

“There are always going to be people complaining,” McClaire said. “I know people at other colleges who have that system and they don’t like it because there’s no guarantee the bus will be there (when they arrive) and they still might not make it to class on time. There are other people who do like it because they’ve taken the time to check the bus schedule.”

McClaire said she thinks VCU does not have enough parking for students. This factored into her decision to live within walking distance of campus.

“It’s a 10-minute walk instead of a two-minute drive with 20 to 30 minutes of trying to find a parking spot,” McClaire said.

Despite the challenges, Jez says the amount of parking available for students has grown.

“In 1990, there (were) roughly 19,000 parking spaces,” Jez said. “We’ve now been adding a number of new decks and we have over 53,000 parking spaces on campus.”

Jez said many options are being considered to provide more parking-including at least one more parking deck. However, he said, other interests must be considered.

“We compete with other needs for the space, whether it’s a new academic building, new administration building, new student housing,” Jez said. “To me it’s more important to build academic buildings and student housing buildings than it is to build the parking sometimes.”

If the student body were to outgrow parking resources, Jez said there has been a small amount of discussion about not allowing freshmen to bring cars on campus, but that this has not been seriously considered by university administration.

To alleviate the burden of parking, Jez said the university coordinates with GRTC Transit System.

“This year, we went to a student transit program where students can ride any GRTC bus for free,” Jez said. “It used to be that students had to pay a $50 fee per semester.”

The program has had some measurable success. Jez said last semester around 300 people paid for the pass. This semester, he said 3,000 people have gotten free passes. He said, however, this is not a measure of how many people are actually using the pass.

Elementary education major Katie Rivara has a free transit pass. She lives about five miles away from the Monroe Park campus and frequently uses her pass to ride the bus to campus.

“I usually take the bus, but at night I don’t want to rely on the bus,” Rivara said.

Jez said he would like the university to work with the transit system more in the future.

“Hopefully, as time goes on, the transit system in the area will grow and folks will have more options,” he said. “If (GRTC) further expands into Chesterfield and Henrico, that may continue to provide additional options not only for students, but for faculty and staff who may then decide to ride the bus and leave their car at home.”

Jez said one of the reasons faculty and staff overflow into the Fan is some people are more willing to park further away from campus than to pay for on-campus parking

“It doesn’t matter how much parking we have on campus,” Jez said. “There are some students, faculty and staff that the only price they are willing to pay for parking is free and, as such, will search anywhere they can to find parking.”

On the occasions she drives, Rivara said she parks farther away from campus for the sake of free parking-even in neighborhoods she thinks are not safe.

“I hate paying to park, because I know I can find a free spot somewhere,” Rivara said.

Rohde said despite the stresses of parking because of the close proximity to VCU, he thinks the Fan is a great area to live. However, he says if students would keep in mind common parking courtesy, it would be an even better neighborhood.

“It would also be helpful if students learned how to park,” Rohde said. “If they pull up and see a spot that’s two and a half car lengths, they’ll park in the middle of it which may or may not give the next person arriving any place to park. So, there’s sort of a selfish attitude about parking.”