What a pain in the park

One of the chief complaints on campus is the availability of parking. While we realize that parking problems are almost universal, we have decided to define the specific reasons we dislike the parking at ASU and offer some possible solutions.

First of all, we recognize that there technically are more parking spots available than there are registered cars. However, if the spots are only available where it is improbable for students to park, then this abundance is useless to many students. Students that have classes scheduled back-to-back on different ends of campus need close and available parking spaces to make it to their classes on time. If students cannot find parking for their first class, though, they need to be on campus earlier. For a first class, the burden of finding a spot is on students. However, if a student has to run across campus between back to back classes, then the burden should fall on the university to fix the parking problem.

We do not think reserved D lots are as beneficial to the school as they are supposed to be. It is obviously beneficial to those students that have permits for these lots. The lots are also monetarily beneficial to the school because the permits for these lots cost $60 more than standard student parking for the year.  However, the majority of the student population should take precedence over minor monetary gains and a small percentage of people.

Another problem is "floaters," or people that wait in a lot for someone to pull out. While we do not particularly like being held up behind floaters, as long as people are not holding up traffic, we do not see anything wrong with inching forward in the parking lot, waiting for a car to move.  Proceeding cautiously is much safer than speeding through each lot, looking for a spot.

Some people might argue that the 10 minutes people spend looking for parking places could just as easily be used to park farther away and walk to class. This is a valid point. Parking should not have to be improved for the benefit of lazy or late students. However, as we mentioned before, this is not a probable solution for students with back-to-back classes on different ends of campus.

One possible solution for the parking problem is to convert the D lots to B lots. An extreme, but not improbable solution would be to move the annex buildings, and turn that area into more parking.  If not for the current students, we hope that as ASU increases enrollment numbers, they will also begin to increase the number of parking spaces. If enrollment keeps up its rate of increase, parking will soon be a very big problem, and because it takes quite a while to establish new parking lots or even purchase existing lots, ASU should really nip this in the bud and start increasing parking availability now instead of scrambling to do so much later.

We realize that at least for the immediate future this is something we have to deal with. There is no magic button to fix these problems, and we appreciate that ASU is also concerned about parking to an extent. However, if we as students do not let our opinions be heard now, nothing may ever be done about this problem.