The University of Central is growing each and every year. New buildings are being built, school population is on the rise, even state tuition is going up. Why then do we have such few parking spots?. Students every day are wasting time and gasoline by roaming around the school for an open spot. Accidents are happening due to students being impatient and being in such a hurry to get to class. The biggest problem is that this issue is not new and is growing. As long as students keep applying to this college, the more parking spots that the university will need. Some questions came to mind after I spent 30 minutes looking for a parking spot. Why hasn't the university done anything to slove this problem?What do students think about the parking crisis? Will the university do anything? Are there any short and long term effects? The answers were not what I thought they were going to be.
The first step to solving a problem is to find out how it started. The parking crisis was caused by two phenomena at UCF, admission rate and new buildings. According to US.news.com, UCF has a total of 42,910 undergraduates and the 2009 fall term had an acceptance rate of 48.3% accepting 3,932 freshman. According to Alex Hammond, a student at UCF, he believes that "most students are coming to UCF because the university is expanding its curriculum by building new buildings, such as the medical school and the new stadium." With all of these students a lot of them must of bought permits. According to UCF parking services, UCF sold 45000 student permits this semester. But how many spots are there for students? According to a programing professor, only 9000. With 5 times as many permits as spots it is quite easy to see why this problem exists.
What does this parking crisis mean to the average UCF student? Surprisingly it means more than spending a ridiculous amount of time driving around for a spot. If you live at one of the off campus housing facilities, such as Pegasus landing or The Edge, the parking crisis is heading your way. According to Trevor Muse, a resident at The Edge, "a lot of students who don't even live here will come here to park so they can use the shuttle to get on to campus." Also with students frantically driving around for a spot, accidents are more prone to happen. According to the Orlando Sentinel, accidents are on the rise ever since the new stadium was built in 2005. Anyone can tell that more accidents means unsafe campus.
What is the University doing about this? In a very literal sense, almost nothing. The two things that they have done was they let students parking on a grassy field next to Greek Road and they increased the amount of shuttle from last year. Is that enough? Of coarse not. The most obvious solution would to build new parking structures. If they keep on building new buildings, why don't they just make a new parking garage? There is plenty of room and every will benefit from it. Maybe UCF should be like other colleges and restrict parking privileges of freshman. The university of Miami doesn't let on campus freshmen to have cars and according to college prowler, they have a parking grade of C+, UCF has a C-. The most drastic solution would be for the University to get even more selective and not accept as many students. With fewer students, there would be more parking spots available.
But what if the University doesn't do anything productive to solve this crisis? University attendance would be gigantic and more a more students would be at UCF. It would get to the point where it is impossible to find parking on campus. The off campus apartment's parking lots would probably be like how UCF is now, with students circling around and around for a parking spot. There would be so many shuttle that the roads would be congested and there would be no quick transportation to class. Alex Hammond, a student at UCF says students might even grow sick a tired and take more aggressive actions. "If the parking issue doesn't get solved soon, I can tell that a lot of students will just grow sick and tired of the situation and some might even protest and riot."
So what if things were different? What if the University solved the problem? Immediate effects are that students would be happier with the university as a whole. With more parking spots the garages would be safer. With more room for attendance the university could see an increase of student applicants which, if accepted, could be turned in to revenue for UCF. Bottom line is, whatever UCF decides to do to fix the parking problem, it needs to be done fast. The problem keeps growing as more and more students apply for UCF.
Works Cited
1. Hammond, Alex interview on October 15th 2009
2. Muse, Trevor interview on October 16th 2009
3.http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/orlando-fl/ucf-3954 October 20th 2009
4. http://collegeprowler.com/university-of-central-florida/parking/ October 20th 2009
5.http://collegeprowler.com/university-of-central-florida/parking/ October 12th 2009
