The Problem
By this time, students joining campus have been warned about the problems associated with parking within the institution. Parking problems affect students, faculty members, guests, and parents. Apparently, the available parking spaces in campus cannot accommodate the rapidly escalating user population. The parking areas are also provided based on political and economic approaches. The political approach entails the application of administrative rules in allocating parking areas (Mostajabi & Trousdale 22).
On the contrary, economic approach, which is now an emerging trend entails charging small fees for parking tickets. Parking rules are clear and discernible to students. However, some students violate parking regulations. Students are getting numerous tickets weekly for violating parking regulations. Moreover, the setting aside of some parking areas to faculty has started causing more problems in campus.
Students are saddened by the fact that the officers regulating the parking spaces have come up with a new approach to giving out tickets.
Presently, illegal parking attracts hefty financial punishment. A ticket worth fifty dollars is too high for students. Furthermore, it is always depressing to return to the car and find a fine voucher placed on the windshield (Mostajabi & Trousdale 24). Occasionally, students have been given the fine vouchers during weekends. Students have also experienced embarrassing situations whenever their friends and parents come to visit them in campus. The campus has not set aside visitors parking spaces.
Students are getting frustrated with the unattainability of parking areas. However, whenever they make slight mistakes such as parking on a fire lane tickets are handed down to them immediately.
Several conflicts have taken place because of quarrels over parking spaces. Students have said severally that they want the problem of parking tackled as an urgent matter. It is important to appreciate that the relevant office is already doing something to resolve the problem. However, the solutions being suggested are likely to worsen the problem particularly in the long term.
The office charged with public safety in campus is instead giving mixed signals (Attorney 29). A communication has been sent from the office indicating that the anticipated changes may not come happen indicating that parking challenges are here to stay.
In addition, the office has urged all users of parking areas to modify their way of life in order to manage the dilemma before changes the implementation of changes. This is a worrying trend and as a college, there is the need to find a way of dealing with this matter. In the subsequent section, the paper discusses the solutions to this problem.
The Solution
Although, parking challenges affects everyone using private transport to campus, it is notable that students themselves can minimize these problems. This paper proposes a Ride – Share Program, which is a personal responsibility towards helping ease the volume rate of campus parking.
The program works on the principle of carpooling (Sorensen, Wachs, Min & Kofner et al 84). It aims at allowing students who commute to campus to register indicating their daily schedule or direction from and to home. This enables pairing up of students in order to car – pool them according to their location and schedule (Sorensen et al 80). For example, this program can encourage even up to four students coming from same location to car – pool in order to save spaces that the other three cars could have occupied.
It is notable that this approach reduces diverse fees associated with using private car daily. Furthermore, the program anticipates that under the program the car – pooled students can miss their transport. Whenever this happens, the students can use taxis or public bus transport.
Therefore, this proposal is also appropriate because it enables students to transition smoothly from overreliance on private transport to public means (Sorensen et al 82). The most important issue required for the success of this program is personal responsibility. Everyone can take a responsibility that to share their car in order p reduce congestion in the parking areas.
Within the same program, the college can implement a cheaper plan involving having students ride bicycles to campus. The campus may ask people interested in using bicycles to register and sign up a pledge that they would not use cars while coming to campus but use bicycles.
Then after the college gets a suitable number of students then they are provided with bicycles, helmets, and locks (Attorney, 2009). The university shall provide these free of charge to such students. This approach is also cost effective particularly when compared with the costs involved in building of garages. It is notable that this approach can target freshmen joining campus.
The plan works well because it frees up several parking areas for students who must use private means because of the distance to their homes. This approach is a win – win for the students and the college (Attorney 29). The students are able to keep the bicycles for their use even after completion of their studies. On the contrary, the campus can ease the tension that normally emerges because of limited parking areas. This solution can work for everyone and minimize expenditures for students.
Works Cited
Attorney, Janelle. The Sharing Solution. California, CA: Nolo, 2009. Print.
Mostajabi, Mahssa., & Trousdale, Jonathan. Georgia Tech 2012: Of the Record. Georgia, GA: College Prowler, 2011. Print.
Sorensen, Paul., Wachs, Martin., Min, Endy., Kofner, Aaron., Ecola, Liisa., Hanson, Mark., Yoh, Allison., Light, Thomas., James, Griffin., & Rand Corporation. Moving Los Angeles: Short-term policy options for improving transportation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp, 2008. Print.