New parking meters won’t increase deck parking

Katherine Johnson
Staff Columnist

Student commuters frustrated by the new parking meters outside of the Temple building have valid complaints. The new meters take the place of what was previously free two-hour parking.

Since VCU is an eclectic school, with 79 percent of students living off campus, the meters by the Temple building on Main Street have made parking more difficult for these students, in an already limited urban environment where parking is hard to come by.

Classes at VCU typically last between 50 minutes and two hours; for most students who drive to campus, it makes more sense to park on the street for free than pay for a parking deck pass, which costs $175 for a commuter pass. With the timing of classes, most students may not have to move their car at all during the two hour limit. This was one area where students could cut costs, after they paid for tuition, books, other necessities and the gas to get to class.

Although parking decks have a lot of positives, including covered, safe and guaranteed parking, students who park on the street choose to do so because it’s cheaper and more convenient. If a student is only on campus for two or three classes a day, why pay so much for a pass when they could basically park for free?

According to a Commonwealth Times article from Feb. 7 (“New parking meters frustrate students”), the new meters requested by VCU Parking and Transportation were made in hopes that students would choose to pay for parking deck passes from them instead of paying into a city meter.

However, $175 for a pass doesn’t make sense for students that can still park for cheaper, even with a meter.

Street parking congestion would be reduced if commuters purchased passes, but this is an unrealistic goal for our campus because motorists who park on the street may not necessarily be VCU students.

The main reason to add the meters was to encourage students to buy parking passes from VCU. According to the CT, “VCU off-street parking was below 50 percent occupancy all around campus.” From this quote, it’s clear that the university wasn’t making a profit off of their own parking facilities.

VCU’s desire for a profit is the only explanation for the university requesting meters. Not only are students no longer able to park for free, they’re having difficulties when they attempt to pay at the new meters. This problem is delaying students, when originally they could just park and go.

While VCU may have thought they were solving the parking problems, they just added more hoops for students to jump through.

Instead of letting students have the option of where to park, whether it be for free or with a pass, the university only focused on fixing their finances. This was a chance that the university didn’t take to show that they care about their students by not causing further financial strain.

It will be interesting to see if the sale of parking passes increases next semester or if VCU’s efforts were in vain.

It’s unlikely that students will budge and purchase a pass, especially if they’re not on campus for long periods of time. Instead, they will continue to scrounge for parking spots on the street and dig for spare change in their cars outside of Temple.