Parking at UTD
September 6th, 2007Since I have always lived on campus at UTD, I’ve never really noticed how bad the parking situation is. I have heard a lot of people complain about this, and there is even a bumper sticker that reads “If you see my professors, tell them I’m running late because I’m still looking for a parking spot”. Now that I live at an off campus apartment, I get to feel this pain first-hand.
Last week, I pulled into the parking lot and saw a pair of reverse lights on the back of a car. By the time I got there, six other cars had raced over to vie for the parking spot. I was chuckling in glorious victory as I pulled into the spot.
Today, I rode my motorcycle to campus and there was not even a spot to park it! I really like riding my bike, because the parking spots are never full and they are right outside the door of the engineering building. Not today! I had to go all the way around to the spots near the library and then walk much further to class. All this, and I was already late!
UTD isn’t going to decrease it’s commuter population, but it was really not designed well for parking. The buildings are all centrally located, and the parking lots are all on the circumfrence. I think the campus could have had a parking lot for each of the buildings, and this would have made things much easier. However, the campus can’t all be rebuilt and the commuter population is not going to decrease, so the only real solution I see to the parking problem would be a parking garage. That way you can get lots of cars in one spot that is pretty close to all the buildings.
Well, isn’t *one* of the reasons to ride a bike the fact that you can park it virtually anywhere? I tend to park on sidewalks in busy areas where parking is not available (I usually find a dead spot on the sidewalk where it’s not in anyone’s way). Of course it all depends on how well the parking rules are enforced but people are *usually* tolerant to motorcycles.