Available parking at the University of Toledo is a pressing issue on campus for students and staff members alike. Students in particular have chimed in with their opinions on the situation as it currently stands, offering their concerns and critiques regarding it as well as a few suggestions for future improvements.
It is worth noting that, of the students that have responded to the line of questioning at hand, the majority of them have C parking passes, though a few of the other students that responded use other passes.
Significant issues that have been mentioned by several of the questioned students included a range of difficulties from pricing to distance from campus to availability and accessibility- each of these issues having its own merit.
The most talked about issue is the one of how expensive the parking passes are when compared to how many parking spots are actually available for students to access. There are about 15,603 students currently enrolled for the fall semester at UToledo, yet the majority of these students are displeased by the current parking situation. Every student interviewed commented that the number of available spots was too small compared to how much money they were paying for this service.
Although some students pay up to $300 for their parking passes, many of them found that they could not even access the parking spots that they were paying hundreds of dollars to use. Several students have reported driving around campus searching for available spots for up to an hour at a time. In many of these cases, students would be forced to park in spots that were not suited for their needs and often so far from their classes and the rest of campus that paying for parking on campus barely seemed worth it to them with how much extra time they would have to spend walking.
In more unfortunate cases, some students even found themselves unable to access a parking spot even after driving around for an extended period of time and would either have to resort to returning home for the day or parking in the parking lot of a nearby business instead and walking to campus. This is not only a massive inconvenience to many students attending this university but also an incredibly unsafe practice that could lead to students finding themselves in dangerous situations simply because they are trying to find viable parking so they can attend the classes they are paying so much for.
This scarcity of parking spaces becomes an even bigger concern when the time for events, games, and tours comes around. These occasions lead to parking spaces being blocked off from students for entire days, making the already sparse parking options an even bigger obstacle for students to overcome on their way to classes. The frequency with which these events occur makes this an even bigger issue for students who find that there are several days a semester where parking is almost impossible for them to deal with. Days when football games are hosted on campus are the worst days for parking, students report, and several have stated that they often simply skip their classes for the day rather than struggle through a sea of other students to find a parking spot for the day.
Playing into this issue is the problem of parking tickets. Students have claimed that they see the current ticketing system as a “money grab” with only a small number of students reporting that they viewed the pricing of tickets to be reasonable for the offense. Nearly every student interviewed believes that the prices for the parking tickets were unreasonably high and given out at a ridiculous rate. Prices for parking passes are already quite hefty considering how much students struggle with even finding spots to use, making some students wonder whether or not parking on campus is worth the money and the hassle of the process.
Several students have even reported being ticketed unfairly, receiving tickets without deserving them. The process for receiving information regarding ticketed vehicles also frustrates many students who find that the process is too slow and difficult, many not receiving notice in the mail regarding the tickets until too much time has passed for them to attempt to argue the ticket. Fear of this issue not being taken seriously and not seeing a resolution has left students distraught.
Another complaint voiced by several students was the lack of accessibility in the parking lots seen around campus. Although most of the lots do have handicap spots, there are usually only a handful of handicapped spots available and several disabled students have reported that they are not even able to use these spots. Often, this is because professors and other faculty members- both disabled and able-bodied- use the spots instead. Although the faculty members who are disabled have every right to be utilizing these spots, it is ridiculous that there are so few that most disabled students find themselves unable to use them. The fact that several students have found able-bodied people using the handicapped parking spaces and leaving none available for the people who actually need them displays a lack of respect and concern for the disabled students and faculty of UToledo.
As for the positives of parking on campus, students do generally agree that they appreciate how simple the process of obtaining and paying for a parking pass was. Students find the process straight-forward and appreciate how that impacts
When asked what improvements could be made to the parking situation at UT, the biggest suggestion was expanding available parking through the addition of parking structures such as the garages that were previously torn down due to safety concerns. The reconstruction of these types of structures would provide students with much-needed parking spots that they all need and would help cut down on the issues currently being faced by students while trying to park on campus. This, of course, implies adding more handicapped spaces to these new structures.
The students of the University of Toledo plead to be heard and for their concerns to be seen and addressed as the serious issues that they are.
