New parking regulations frustrate students living in Fan
New regulations that took effect March 1 limit parking between the 1000 and 1500 blocks of West Avenue to one-hour parking, seven days a week from 7 p.m. to midnight.
Sam Isaacs
Staff Writer
Elementary education major and Fan resident Sarah Meier competes with street cleaning, sidewalk construction and church activities for a parking spot outside of her Franklin Street apartment on a daily basis. New parking restrictions that began earlier this month in the Fan will only make that challenge harder for Meier and other Fan residents.
New regulations that took effect March 1 limit parking between the 1000 and 1500 blocks of West Avenue to one-hour parking, seven days a week from 7 p.m. to midnight, a change from the formerly free weekday parking after 9 p.m. and free weekend parking.
West Avenue is three blocks from Hibbs Hall and the Cabell Library and is the second area where restrictions were added this winter in parking areas students frequent. At the beginning of the semester, parking meters were installed outside of the T. Edward Temple building on Main Street.
Park Avenue, Harvie Street and Hanover Avenue could also see new parking restrictions as soon as April, according to the Fan District Association.
Meier is worried these changes could negatively affect her living situation.
“I understand the streets can’t hold everyone, but I also think it is important for those who live here to have parking in front of their own apartments,” Meier said. “I personally can’t afford a student parking pass; I’m already paying so much for tuition.”
Roger Whitfield, president of the FDA, said the new regulations were made to protect the street parking of homeowners from not only students, but event parkers.
“It is easy to see this as an anti-student decision,” Whitfield said. “But there are also parkers from basketball games and church functions in the area, so this isn’t targeted at any one group.”
Whitfield added that the decision was made by the Fan District Association to give the residents of the area the best parking set up. The FDA addressed their reasoning for adding new restrictions in a statement in late February. It said that the number of parking permits issued exceeds the number of spaces available on the street.
“There is a consensus that the Fan has a shortage of available on-street parking … We have reviewed numerous options and are recommending our next step to increase restrictions,” the statement said.
If the new regulations successfully reduce the parking of non-permitted vehicles in the area, restrictions could expand further into the Fan, the statement said
In order for further regulations to be added residents of the district would have to say they want them, Whitfield said. Even if the new restrictions don’t make their way past West Avenue, effects of the current changes are already being felt.
“It is hard enough to park with street cleaning and funerals at the church across the street,” Meier said. “It is making it hard to live here.”
