Construction for a new parking garage to be located on Lake Avenue has begun. Moses York / The Daily Beacon
Parking and Transit Services expand parking, utilize new technologies Cat Trieu
Staff Writer Year-round, parking is one of the biggest banes of students’ and faculties’ existences on campus, but the UT Parking and Transit Services hope to better the process. Junior in finance Chris Biller, a non-commuter for two years, explained his experience with on-campus parking as “frustrating.” “Almost everyone you talk to about campus parking has a negative connotation,” Biller said. With more students bringing their cars to campus this year, parking has become tight for both commuters and non-commuters. According to Mark Hairr, Director of Parking and Transit Services, there was a huge increase in the number of students who bought permits for the 2017-2018 academic year. “Even though we have 50 more students
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living on campus than last year, we sold about 300 more permits,” Hairr said. For students, commuter and residential, with cars, more parking permits sold means less parking spots are available. While commuters have to deal with running late for a class because they could not find a spot in time, noncommuters often find themselves walking long distances back to their dorm, especially when returning late at night. While many students believe that Parking and Transit Services need to take more action to increase the number of parking spaces on campus, Hairr said the work is being done. “If you go back about five years, we’ve actually added more than 1,500 parking spaces on campus that didn’t exist before then,” Hairr said, referring to the new Stokely and Lake Avenue garages. Parking and Transit Services has also leased parking spaces from the nearby Church Street United Methodist and the city of Knoxville
itself. Along with these leases, Parking and Transit Services has also resorted to temporary usage of fraternity parking towards the back of Fraternity Park Drive to increase the number of available parking spots for students. With the inclusion of these spots, Hairr explained that in reality, there was actually never a situation in which there were no parking spots. “We’ve had hundreds of empty parking spaces,” Hairr said. “We didn’t run out of spaces in the fall semester, which is our busiest time of the year.” Hairr and Bindner explained the parking complaints as ones that actually are about drivers’ preferences, especially when it comes to commuters. “This past fall, we had complaints from commuters who arrived to campus later and were not able to find something convenient,” Bindner said. “We don’t run out of parking, but
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what we do run out of is convenient parking.” While recommending that commuters deal with the parking issue by arriving earlier to get a spot, Parking and Transit Services are still adding more parking spots. An additional parking garage will be built off Lake Avenue next to the current one that stands. According to Hairr, the garage is tentatively set to open August 1 of the 2018-2019 school year. The current garage on Lake Avenue contains parking spaces for mostly non-commuter students, but the new garage will accommodate for mainly commuter students. “It (new Lake Avenue garage) is going to improve the convenience factor,” Hairr said, with the new garage being near the center of campus and Strong Hall. The finished garage will add over 1,000 parking spaces for UT students. See PARKING on Page 2
Tuesday, January 16, 2018