Parking appeals rise

As the population at GCSU has grown, concerns about parking for students who live on campus has also grown. In previous years, for example, many of the freshmen living on central campus had to park at the Irwin Street parking lot, a fair distance away from the closest residence hall, as there were few other options.

Successful changes have been made this year, as GCSU has made more parking spots available to students on campus.

The biggest change this year comes from the parking lots surrounding the Centennial Center. The lots behind Foundation and the Centennial Center are now Resident lots, with the lot behind Napier Hall serving as a commuter lot. In the past, these lots were used just as commuter, Employee and overflow lots, where upperclassmen could pay a fee to park there.

Greg Brown, associate director of Auxiliary Services, has helped to coordinate the new changes.

“[The parking situation is] way better than the last three years,” he said. “Changing the Clarke Street lot to commuter and getting rid of overflow gave more students accessibility.”
No new spots were added, but by changing where students are allowed to park, opened up more spots around campus.

“The Foundation parking lot is a prime example,” said Brown. “There were a hundred or so parking spots available and only 50 being used.”

The changes will hopefully help students in avoiding the fines and tickets received from staying too long in the two hour parking spots or parking in the wrong zones as they test their luck and hurry off to class. Two full-time lot monitors randomly search each lot to make sure that no one is parking in the wrong lot and give citations for any violation that they see.

Brown said that freshmen accounted for the most violations last year, a trend that has continued throughout the first month of this year. Each citation can be appealed, however, if there is a valid reason. Evan Karanovich is part of the Parking Appeals Committee, which meets monthly to review any citations that were appealed.

“A lot of people don’t even know about appeals,” Karanovich said. “You can submit your appeal electronically or in person, but it’d be better if you were there.”

Karanovich also said that the trouble spots were the Peabody lot, across from Beeson Hall, with commuters parking in Employee spots. The other trouble spot is the Centennial Center. He said a simple solution would be to just park where you are supposed to.

“If you just park anywhere, you’re gonna get ticketed,” Karanovich said.

This is good advice to follow, considering that just this year there have already been 866 citations issued by Parking & Transportation. Of those issued, 110 have been appealed, with a 95 percent denial rate.

Students on central campus can avoid the challenges of finding a parking spot by walking to class. For students living at West Campus, however, they either have to drive to class or ride the shuttle, which in the past was not always reliable. Improvements were made this year as well, to assure that all students reach class on time.

“We’ve implemented the ‘stop and go’ system,” Brown said. “In the morning, students aren’t coming back from class, so when the shuttles are full [at West Campus], they take off.”

Once reaching main campus, the shuttle heads back quickly, usually coming back before the next shuttle has left and allowing students to get to campus sooner. Brown said that this system is implemented during the “big peak periods,” from 8:30 to 9:40 a.m., 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. and from around 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. throughout the week.

There are other changes that have been made. The shopping shuttle, the shuttle which takes students to both Wal-Mart and the Milledgeville Mall on weekends, is now free of charge. Brown also said that there is no charge for shuttles that are requested for travel to student-centered events around campus.

There are also new and renovated buildings that will start opening up soon, which will force some shuttle routes to be adjusted. Brown, however, said that he does not expect to see a change in timing, which is something that could go a long way in determining how and when students get to class.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 3 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry