By Ashton York

University of Arkansas Student Affairs held a workshop Oct. 17 to get feedback from students about campus transportation and parking demand. The event allowed students to see what steps the university is taking to make improvements while also allowing them to voice their opinions publicly.

Michael Baldwin, an architect at Core Architects in Rogers, has helped with a University of Arkansas campus parking garage study for over a year. The study observes campus parking, transportation and mobility in a data-driven sense. The goal of this research is to figure out how to reduce the demand for on-campus parking by providing alternate transportation and additional parking lots.

Although the study originally began as a scope of future parking garage locations, it evolved into a search for additional transportation options and optimizing current options.

The researchers took a campus-wide survey that ended up with over 5,000 respondents. The goal of the survey was to understand the general perceptions of parking on campus and see if there was any additional interest in new approaches.

Of the surgery respondents, 87.6% said they park on campus and 87.4% said they were unsatisfied with the current parking system. 

Iain Banks, a transportation and parking specialist, discussed different transportation management analyses and strategies that other universities have implemented. He mentioned options such as demand-based parking with tiered permit rates, replacing annual permits with daily permits, and real-time parking information about which facilities have availability and which are full. 

Reducing the overall demand is another possibility to solve the problem. Banks said a carpool permit system or providing more information about commuting and on-campus transportation were viable choices to reduce the amount of students using parking spaces. The study also took into account the financial aspect of making such changes.

“The big picture here is, ‘Why are we doing this?’” said Khalid Khan, the leader of the study presentation. “We’re doing this because parking is expensive, it takes up space. We have a system that grew up with the university. We’ve doubled in student population in the last 20 years. We cannot continue to do things the way we’ve always done them.”

Khan said the only buildable sites are parking lots, but there is only so much land available. He said the study’s tools can add more parking areas while also reducing the overall dependence on parking to decrease congestion. 

More speakers at the Student Affairs event said transit and parking services are self-supported needs and generate their own revenue. Therefore, the more parking and transit has to spend, the higher the parking rates become.

The meeting closed with a discussion from students and viewers, allowing them to share their opinions on the topic. Multiple students voiced their concerns for off-campus students and the desperation for the transportation problem to be resolved.