As a current Arizona State University (ASU) student, I face many problems with the parking. I am sure that many other students face this problem with me. This problem has serious danger on the students’ academic career because it can make them skip classes or make them attend late to their classes. I think that there are five main reasons to this problem in ASU. The first one is because of the huge number of the students. Also, the lack of the parking lots. The price that the students pay for each hour to park their vehicles is another problem. After that comes the value of the permit parking if the student wants to buy a parking lot. The last one is the distance between the parking lots and the classes. So, what should Arizona State University do to handle this problem?According to ASU website (https://asunow.asu.edu/content/record-82000-students-choose-asu) there are more Preliminary first-day enrollment shows records set across nearly all areas. Undergraduate enrollment grew to 66,309 and graduate school enrollment grew to 15,751, for a total of 82,060. Arizona State University. Imagine that huge amount of people being in one place, how it would be? Imagine just ten thousand students searching for a place to bark their cars in it. It is impossible for any academic place in the world to carry that amount of vehicles to park in it. ASU should make their campus bigger to make the campus handle the big amount of the students. Also, they should reduce the amount of the people that enter ASU. They can do that by raising the GPA that Arizona State University needs to accept the students. By that they can fix the parking and the overcrowded classes problems. On top of that they will raise the academic thinking in the students because of the new GPA that they need.The second problem is the lack of the parking lots in ASU. With the huge amount of the students that attend to ASU, it is guaranteed to have a lack of parking lots in the campus. According to https://cfo.asu.edu/pts-visitor-tempe?destination=node%2F816 there are seven places that carries parking lots in it. Let us say that each place has three hundred parking lots, the total will be two thousands and one hundred parking lots; this number is too small facing the huge amount of students that attend to ASU. Arizona State University should increase the parking lots for the students. They can build a parking lot building which has many floors in it. For example, if they build a five floors parking building, and each floor has a 120 parking lots; the total will be 600 parking lots. If they build six buildings, they will have more than three thousand parking lots in it which is better than the 2,100 parking lots; ASU will offer more than one thousand parking lots.
The third problem is that the amount student pay for parking in ASU is significantly large. It is evident from the logistics that when the demand is high, the prices of services tend to rise. In this regard, students are feeling the weight of paying high costs for parking that may affect their survival in the institution because the cost of education increases indirectly to unmanageable levels. As the cost of education in the ASU rise, the enrollment may reduce significantly. It follows that there is a need for actions to lessen the cost of parking with immediate effect.
As it regards the high cost of parking, it is important to borrow ideas from how CBDs work. Meitin and Plass (2012) noted that upon increase of parking space, the cost payable for the parking would decrease. The law of supply and demand would, in this case, be critical. Therefore, the university should use the amount paid to make changes to accommodate more vehicles. Moreover, the administration can take measures to reduce the parking cost immediately to help the students lessen the cost of operations when in the university premises.
The fourth problem affecting parking in ASU is that there is no option for buying the parking space. The annual cost for a parking permit in ASU can be as high as $780. From this point of view, the university may reduce the cost of the permits by introducing a chance to buy the parking lot for an extended period other than paying hourly. The available options are not enough. The move would attract those who need to drive to the university on a daily basis. In this respect, the university management may need to come up with new structures for parking as mentioned above. After that, the student can have an opportunity to buy or lease the parking lots. The move would go a long way in reducing time wasted when the students are looking for a free parking space. One can use up to one hour trying to find a parking space and avoid the many tickets that come alongside illegal parking in the institution. There are up to twenty-two tickets that one can get for wrongly parking ranging from $15 to $500 (Arizona State University, 2014). These can reduce significantly if the students can lease or buy the parking space for a long term use.
The last problem is the distance from the parking area to the classroom. Whereas vehicles cause considerable disturbances, it does not follow that they should be very far from the classes. Student waste time in walking from the parking lot to the classes reducing the usefulness of the car significantly. Fundamentally, one uses a car to reduce time wastage. Therefore, it is meaningless if one drive for twenty minutes to college and has to walk for another ten minutes to the classroom. In this regard, the university needs to change the parking strategies in the institution.
For instance, as mentioned earlier, the school may need to come up with parking buildings at strategic places that are not far from the classes. When the car park is near the classroom, the student will not waste time walking to the classroom. At the same time, more student may begin using their cars to and from the university due to the convenience. Therefore, the institution would not need to encourage the student to use public means, walk, or bicycling because the expanded parking space would accommodate a majority of the car owners and increase revenues for the institution (Parking and transit, n.d). The conclusion agrees with a report on the economic impacts of parking in Auckland (“The Economic Impacts of parking requirements in Auckland,” 2013).
References
The economic Impacts of parking requirements in Auckland. (2013). Retrieved on March 22, 2016 from http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/plansstrategies/unitaryplan /Documents/Section32report/Appendices/Appendix%203.9.13.pdf
Meitin, O., and Plass, M., (2012). Impact of Parking Supply and Demand Management on Central Business District (CBD) Traffic Congestion, Transit Performance and Sustainable Land Use. University of Florida. Retrieved on March 22, 2016 from http://www.dot.state.fl.us/research- center/Completed_Proj/Summary_TE/FDOT_BDK77_977-07_rpt.pdf
Parking and transit. (n.d). Retrieved on March 22, 2016 from https://cfo.asu.edu/pts- rules?destination=node%2F748
