Hired by the University of Wyoming to study the state of parking and transit around campus, Walker Consultants presented the results and preliminary recommendations of its study last Friday concluding spaces should be reallocated but no additional parking should be added in the next 10 years.
Jacob Lieb, the firm’s national director of Higher Education Mobility Planning, spoke to a room full of faculty, staff and students about results that came directly from a study conducted last fall.
“The goal was to get people to take this survey so that we could compile results to create the best 10-year plan that will also be a part of the University master plan,” said Lieb.
Nearly 3,000 people responded to the survey, including students, staff and faculty, and 20 percent of those respondents left comments.
“You don’t see a response rate like that unless an issue is truly important,” said Lieb.
He went on to discuss the problems associated with parking on campus and revealed that a weeklong observational study of parking spaces showed only a 56 percent average occupancy across all of campus. This number included staff and faculty parking, pay by the hour parking, free parking and resident parking.
“There is an imbalance of demand,” said Lieb. “We’re seeing near total occupancy of resident parking spots and any other parking areas that are most central to the University.”
Further data showed that the average student spent anywhere from a few minutes to nearly 15 trying to find a parking space.
In addition to parking, the study also addressed transit issues. Transit buses run between stops on campus and more distant express lots, carrying over 600,000 students each year.
“One glaring need for the transit system is a new transit maintenance facility,” said Lieb. “The current one is not sized or placed appropriately for the volume of people using the system and the eventual expansion that will happen.”
He mentioned that the cost currently to run the buses is much lower compared to other universities and operates fairly well now. Campus community members commented that other larger universities tended to rely more on transit systems to shuttle students to campus instead of choosing increased parking options.
Halfway through his presentation Lieb revealed what everyone wanted to know — should UW build more parking, and if so, when? Walker Consultants recommended that no additional parking should be added to the university and that current lots and street parking available would be more than enough for the next 10 years.
A staff member pointed out that illustrations of available parking Lieb presented would soon become outdated with the possible addition of new residence halls on the north side of campus, pending an ongoing housing survey.
“We believe that even if we lose some of the larger main lots closer to campus, parking still won’t become an issue,” Lieb responded. “We were working with the information we had available to us at the time.”
Other attendees pointed out that the reportedly available parking spots did not accurately reflect the reality they experience day to day in commuting to the University.
The initial proposal focuses on tiered parking permits, selling permits for spots closer to campus for a higher price and gradually reducing it for lots further and further from campus. Current recommendations also emphasize bulking up transit operations and transit demand management.
“There are lots of options we have in this preliminary proposal,” said Lieb. “The next steps after this will be to hear feedback, use it to help inform our full report, and then come back with a final plan.”
