Parking continues to frustrate

As the driver of a silver Ford Focus wove through the Mansfield Library parking lot her ponytail bounced from shoulder to shoulder as she scanned the rows of parked vehicles. Denied an empty space, she hit the accelerator and zoomed down Campus Drive.

Thousands of University of Montana students, faculty and staff conduct a similar hunt each weekday. Their prey is one of the elusive 4,400 available parking spots located on campus.

Although many have shelled out for a $92.50 semester parking pass, the emblem does not guarantee a spot, only that its owner won't get ticketed upon finding one.  

"You pay $185 [a year] for the chance to park," student Sean Schilke said. "It's like a bad lottery."

Schilke, a senior studying economics, served as the student representative for the Parking Appeals Committee last semester, where he encountered over 200 parking fine appeals, mostly from disgruntled students.

Faced with toting around 10 textbooks this semester, Schilke decided to join the waiting list for a reserved parking spot. The $500 fee for the privilege hardly makes him blink.

"With all the time and gas I'd save, it would be worth it," he said.

The lack of parking is an issue that will never disappear, according to Robert Duringer, UM's vice president of administration and finance.

"We're bounded by the mountains on one side, the river on the other side and the city on the third side, so you're never going to have a perfect parking situation," he said.

Duringer, who pays the $500 fee to park his vehicle in a reserved spot, wishes students would view the historical context of the parking problem.

"We have come light years in our parking," he said. "Ten years ago, before we got the bus system and the Park-N-Rides in place, parking was hell."

Back then, he said, it was not unusual for lots to fill to capacity by 8:30 a.m.

In recent years students have clamored for UM to build a parking structure with a larger carrying capacity than the three-story one that currently exists. "More Parking @ the U of M," a Facebook group, even bears a picture that reads "parking structures are sexy."

Duringer said that while the university dusts off this idea every couple of years, each time the undertaking never fiscally balances out.

"The answer is, yeah, we should build one, but we couldn't make it pay for itself," Duringer said, noting that UM would have to triple the cost of parking decals in the process. "For nine months of the year we'd be able to make a go of it because the fees would be higher, but in the summertime, most students leave."

Meanwhile, Duringer said, money is still owed on the current parking structure and the two Park-N-Ride lots. UM makes a bond payment of $77,079 on the garage and pays annual loans on the Park-N-Rides to the tune of $99,000, plus up to $100,000 a year for lot maintenance.

 Meanwhile, the Office of Public Safety, which enforces campus parking, receives no state funding. Instead it operates on the sales of parking decals and fines. For the fiscal year 2010, UM earned $1.2 million from parking decals and hourly lot fees. Parking fines for the same period totaled $580,000.

Chief and director of UM Public Safety Jim Lemcke said the parking fees go to salaries, maintenance and development, assistance and enforcement.

Lemcke, who purchased parking decals for his car and a motorcycle, gets to campus early to avoid parking headaches. However, he recently had trouble finding a place to park after running a late-morning errand off-campus. He eventually found a spot, though it was far from his office.

"I had to walk further, but that's where people really get into trouble, is if they show up last minute and expect to park right in front of their building," he said.

According to Lemcke, in 2008, the Office of Public Safety offered to limit the number of decals sold, in an attempt to appease those upset that they oversell the number of available parking spots.

"The faculty, staff, and ASUM resisted that whole-heartedly so we never got to the discussion level," he said. "Everybody wanted a shot at a decal and nobody wanted to be locked out, even if it was difficult to find [a spot]."

As hollowing out Mount Sentinel to build a giant underground parking garage is an unlikely solution, the burden falls on ASUM Transportation and its director, Nancy Wilson, to seek and provide alternative methods of transportation.

Wilson, who bikes to work, advocates sustainable options such as biking or using the Park-N-Rides, said she would like to see less parking at the university.

While she acknowledges that students may find it a hassle to learn the bus system or travel to campus on foot or by bike, Wilson feels they will find it less of a hassle than searching for a parking spot.

"You will find it convenient if you start doing it," she said. "When you think about warming up your car, driving in traffic, stopping at stoplights and trying to park, you're really spending just as much time."

Despite the improvements the university has made, Duringer believes students will always gripe about the parking situation.

"It's never going to go away, although it has gotten substantially better," Duringer said. "I'm really quite pleased with how we do. You have to make lemonade out of it, right?"

erin.cole@umontana.edu