No walk in the park
Transportation officials try to deal with loss of spaces, intense demand
Lori Kay has one of the most thankless jobs at UW–Madison.
Kay oversees the one thing that seems to infuriate faculty, staff, students and visitors more than any other issue on campus: parking. Hardly a day goes by when Kay doesn’t get an earful from someone upset about it.
| 1992 | 1997 | |
| Total Spaces | 11,015 | 10,978 |
| Permit Spaces | 8,140 | 7,997 |
| Visitor Spaces | 1,756 | 2,022 |
| Disabled Spaces | 202 | 349 |
| Dept/Other Spaces | 917 | 610 |
| Total Surface Spaces | 10,267 | 8,151 |
| Total Ramp/Garage Spaces | 748 | 2,827 |
| Net loss of spaces due to 1998 construction | ||
| Spaces lost to construction in 1998 | 992 | |
| Spaces gained after construction in 1998 | 625 | |
| Net Loss | 367 | |
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Also in this report: (Note: The Mar. 18 issue of Wisconsin Week has a detailed information map on page 9 that outlines the location, timeframe, and traffic and parking impact of constuction and renovation projects planed for 1998.) |
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“In our business, we are not always able to give the answer that someone is looking for,” says Kay, director of UW–Madison’s Transportation Services. “But we do have to listen.”
The duties for Kay and her staff will continue to prove challenging this year as the university prepares for a busy season of construction. Numerous projects, from building construction and renovation to road and utility improvements, will result in a net loss of 367 parking spaces, including 283 that will be permanently lost.
The lost spaces will be made up for starting this year and continuing into future years with the construction of several ramps on campus.
While the parking situation may seem particularly grave this year, UW–Madison has had a deficit of almost 500 parking spaces in each of the past three years and has effectively managed the reductions, says Bruce Braun, assistant vice chancellor for Facilities Planning and Management.
Many parking permit holders who will be displaced this year have been notified and offered alternate parking assignments in up to seven or eight different lots on campus, Kay says. Others will be notified by letter in the coming weeks.
Kay’s office is considering opening up a part of the overnight section of Lot 60 for more parking during the day, and is examining other options for temporary parking as well. Kay and her staff are also working with UW Hospital and Clinics officials to identify parking arrangements for staff at the medical facility, as much of this year’s construction will be on the west end of campus.
The emotion people exhibit over parking at UW–Madison — or rather the lack of parking — can be intense. Some permit holders in Lot 46, the Southeast Ramp, became upset recently when told they would need to move out for two days because of the state boys’ basketball tournament. Members of the UW arts community, meanwhile, have complained, fearing that attendance at arts events has dropped because of competition for parking with Kohl Center events.
Kay and her staff have worked with both groups to address the problems, from giving free bus passes and the option of parking in other lots to Lot 46 permit holders, to providing separate reserved parking for arts events. The delayed opening of the Southeast Ramp addition has contributed to the difficult situation.
“It’s always a balancing act for meeting many different needs, but a lot of people think parking is an absolute right and that we have no right to move them,” she says.
The parking woes on campus may have to do with the American love affair with the automobile. Statistics seem to back this up: 71 percent of employees drove to campus by themselves at least one day a week during warm weather in 1997, according to preliminary figures from a Transportation Services study. And the percentage of faculty and staff taking the bus to work in warm weather has dropped from 5.2 percent in 1993 to 3.5 percent in 1997, the figures show. Moreover, 88 percent of employees who drive to campus indicated in a recent transportation survey that they “absolutely” would not ride a bus to work, Kay says.
“It’s proven extraordinarily hard to convince people to give up their cars for buses,” Robert March, chair of the Transportation Services Committee, told the Campus Planning Committee last month.
Not that Kay and her staff aren’t trying. One pilot program, which allows people to park four days or fewer a week on campus and receive a refund for the days they used another form of transportation, is full with 450 participants. This flex-parking option, part of the Transportation Demand Management program, has helped ease the parking strain on campus and will be expanded, Kay says.
Lot 60 commuters are also offered half-price campus bus passes, and a free shuttle runs parkers from University Research Park to campus. There are also about 50 employees participating in a flex bicycle program. Kay’s office is also working with a transportation consultant to study how to make the campus bus routes more efficient and attractive to employees and students.
In addition, Transportation Services is studying the possibility of offering a subsidized bus pass for employees, patterned after the successful student bus pass, which is paid by student fees. But the university already pays Madison Metro about $1 million a year for campus bus service, and Kay has estimated that offering a bus pass for employees at half the regular price would cost several hundred thousand dollars annually.
And those dollars are hard to come by in the parking budget, which — at $13.4 million this year — has doubled since 1992. Despite complaints that they cost too much, parking permits, which range from $180 a year for Lot 60 to $805 a year for the Van Hise Ramp, don’t provide enough revenue to meet needs: On average, permits cost about 20 cents to 25 cents per hour. The budget is supplemented by revenue from parking tickets.
Because of available reserves, the cost of parking in most campus lots will increase only 3 percent next year, and increases should stay at 3 percent to 5 percent the next few years. But permit prices will go higher as the university constructs and renovates facilities and replaces surface lots with expensive parking ramps, which cost a minimum of $20,000 per parking space to build.
Higher prices may ultimately be the only incentive that changes how people get to UW–Madison, Kay says. Transportation demand management programs nationwide have discovered that the disincentive of higher costs is the only thing that really causes people to alter their modes of transportation.
Kay believes her emphasis on customer service — even though she and her staff can’t meet every demand placed on them — has helped ease some of the parking frustration in the six years since she took over her job.
Still, she sometimes wonders why people get so emotional about parking.
“At times,” she say, “I want to say, ‘Come on, it’s just parking.'”