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UMass Lowell’s presumed parking problems

Dave Rudderham

Connector Editor

School is back in session and many students have already gotten back into the traffic routine in Lowell. Now that students have finally made it to school, many are forced to confront the harsh reality of limited parking that has grown expensive. But just how limited is parking, and is it actually that expensive?

Jon Victorine is the director of UCAPS (UCard Access and Parking Services) and was once a student of UMass Lowell. Before becoming staffed at the school, he was earning his bachelor’s and eventually his master’s degree and he remembers the darker times of parking. Back then, what he refers to as “price protection” didn’t exist and he “would have loved to have something like price protection back then,” says Victorine.

Price protection is a policy that protects students from random price
increases in parking.

“It was an agreement we made with the SGA years ago,” says Victorine. “What that means is that, in any given year, we promise that your rate won’t increase more than five percent.”

This is actually how parking ended up in a tiered system with freshman paying more.

“First years don’t have a rate in mind,” says Victorine. “But after their price is established they’re grandfathered in.”

He emphasized that once you’re a student with a quoted price for parking passes you will not have that price rise by more than five percent a year. “We don’t want to increase everyone’s parking by $50 or $100 a year.”

The money garnered through parking fees, as it turns out, makes no
profit. In a study, UCAPS found that, in order to cover the debt surface,
everyone’s parking would have to be raised to $500 a year. The cost of owning and maintaining parking spots isn’t fully covered by students’ fees.

According to Victorine, there is always the possibility that more spots will be needed, but the decision to buy more property or lease space will be determined by looking at data at the end of the year.

“I’m not aware of any more parking [expansions], but we’ll look at projections at the end of the year and take a look at those numbers,” says Victorine.

The cost of these new spaces would be pricey, but given the fact that there were 4300 new freshmen accepted in the school, Victorine says, “Any increase to the population places a strain on limited inventory.”

Such a strain could cause a parking crisis like the one that happened five years ago. Currently, every student is guaranteed parking – the only real problem of being overcrowded is on the North parking lot between the hours of 11 a.m. and 12 or 12:30 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday. It’s all a game of statistics and logistics that Victorine is forced to play throughout the year.

“We do keep track of these things throughout the year and make any small changes, but at the end of the year we take a look at all the projections, as well as look at last years projections, to see how close we were to them for that year,” says Victorine.

Even something as seemingly simple as snow removal has proven to be quite costly in these harsh New
England winters. And again, the school is forced to look at the data.

“[There are] two ways to [remove snow],” says Victorine. Snow farming, which is basically pushing all of the snow to the side and hope for the best and hope it melts – and we saw how well that worked last year. The other way is hauling it away.”

The second method is much more costly and is only done if snow becomes too much of an issue. Last year it was, and the school had to respond in kind. “We did a great job of getting rid of that snow last year,” says Victorine.

And there are other issues as well. Reducing the school’s carbon footprint has also become a priority, not just for the school, but also for
students. According to Victorine the carpool parking program is up by 20 percent and recently an estimated 100 to 120 cars have been saved from coming to campus. That doesn’t just equate to a smaller carbon footprint, it also equates to more money in students pockets.

“At the end of the year we even give the students that carpool a little extra UCash as a reward,” says Victorine. And that’s in addition to receiving what he refers to as “preferred parking,” which is reserved parking for carpooling students. This parking is located closer to campus and often right next to handicap spaces.

The carpool parking program also helps with having a finite number of spaces. However, according to
Victorine, the way they’ve mitigated a repeat of the last parking crisis, despite an increase of students, is the expansion of parking that started back in 2009.

The decisions to build the garages and increase parking was looked at by a parking committee and studied extensively. Now, even with parking lots on North becoming busy on Mondays and Wednesdays, the director of UCAPS and former UMass student of nine years observes these better times.

Victorine says, “I challenge anyone when they say, ‘Oh, we’re paying for parking – why isn’t it guaranteed?’ It is guaranteed – you might just have to park farther away. You get into the flow of things.”

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