No parking? Savvy schools are discovering that building a parking lot is not necessarily the best way—or indeed the only way—to solve campus parking problems - Facilities/Parking

University Business, June, 2002 by Nicole Rivard

Last year, "Parking Problems Far From Solved" were among the many parking crunch focused headlines of the University of Rhode Island's student newspaper, The Good 5 Cent Cigar. But that was before the school's new $8 million transportation plan was set in motion in March. What's more, URI's parking problems are not unique, say campus planning and construction experts. At urban, suburban and even rural schools all over the country, campus growth in the form of new building construction is swallowing up the surfaces that once served as parking areas.

"There's been a real. explosion in lab research space and multimedia libraries, especially," says Chris Luz of Kansas City-based HNTB Companies (www.hntb.com), a multidiscipline consulting firm with expertise in parking-facility design and renovation, parking analysis, and planning. Such facilities eat up acreage, he says, and that space often is land that was allocated to student, visitor, and campus employee parking. The primary challenges then become where to find new space for the vehicles, how to manage transportation to and from the new facilities, and how to fund the project--with all of its incumbent (and often costly) wrinkles.

URI: MASTER PLAN/MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

In South Kingston, URI students, staff, and employees constantly complained about the strained parking conditions on the campus. The 6,600 fee-free surface parking spots could not keep up with demand from 3,000 faculty/staff, 4,000 resident students, and 10,000 commuters. It was a surprise, then, when during URI's master planning process in 1999, campus planners discovered the school actually had a sufficient parking supply. But campus officials weren't managing the parking and transportation system properly; people were parking wherever they wanted to--students were even parking in faculty lots. The biggest issues: lack of both financial resources and parking enforcement, and a less-than-adequate campus shuttle service. Administrators knew that lots with programmed entry/exit gates would help curtail the problem of illegal parking, but they didn't have the funds for the technology needed, and no one wanted to take the money out of the operating budget.

"We had to completely rethink the way we allocate parking," says Kathleen Mallon, URI's director of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research. "The planners also suggested the establishment of parking fees as one way to generate revenue needed to better manage the parking system."

Then came the complication: the school's earlier decision to build a 9,000-seat Convocation Center meant that its opening in June 2002 would put URI completely over its parking capacity. Suddenly, the school had to look at parking management plus construction and transportation solutions.

The master plan. To create a master plan, Mallon engaged Boston-based Goody, Clancy and Associates (www.gcassoc.com), a provider of architectural planning, and urban design services. With input from the consultancy, URI created its own parking and transportation plan, which included construction of 1,000 new parking stalls, possibly some gated lots, and an expanded shuttle service. To help reimburse the $8 million loan for the project (they also received a $1 million federal highway grant), campus officials decided to implement the parking fees they had been considering--a first for the university. Starting July 1, URI is establishing an Enterprise Fund to account for all of the revenue and costs associated with the parking projects and to provide for maintenance and related future projects.

As school officials had wished, the university will no longer support parking out of its operating budget. Beginning this fall, URI commuters will pay a $100 annual fee, and residents will pay $175 yearly to keep their cars on campus. The university will contribute $350,000 annually, the rough equivalent of $100 per employee parking space. Mallon says that the Student Senate supported the introduction of the fees because early on she involved the members in the planning process, clearly detailing the magnitude of the parking problem and the costs involved in the solution.

"Having the Senate behind us helped us get the support of the Board of Governors for Higher Education," Mallon says. "Without action from the student body, the Board typically would have advocated holding down expenses." In fact, administrators did make a conscious effort to keep costs low. They decided not to take the risk of instituting the higher fees that would have been necessary to pay for a parking structure; instead, they opted for two new surface lots on the northeast corner of the main campus, near the athletics complex. The school will break ground on the new lots this summer.

The environmental wrinkle. Of course, there had to be an obstacle somewhere along the way: Campus officials encountered resistance from environmentalists when they proposed their surface-lot construction plans. As it happens, URI is located on an aquifer that provides an underground drinking water supply to South Kingstown residents. Construction of a conventional nonporous asphalt lot would create runoff that would have to be channeled into conduits, moving the excess water off site--and away from the aquifer. But school officials decided to construct the lots with porous asphalt, enabling the school to recycle water collecting on the lot right back to the aquifer. Layered below the asphalt will be a 3-foot-deep stone bed, and 14 feet of natural soil profile to groundwater. The university is also installing test wells to ensure that the water percolating through the Layers is properly cleaned before it reaches the aquifer.