Getting a parking permit and finding parking on campus at the beginning of the semester has been a challenge, but some students feel that this semester is worse than in semesters past.
Director of Parking Jim Spice assures that this is all par for the course.
Parking permits for the fall semester opened on Aug. 6. Spice said that permits did not begin to get waitlisted until Aug. 24, two days before classes started, a trend that is very consistent with what has been observed in the past.
UCCS student Jake Wright was lucky enough to get a parking pass, noting he had heard it can be tough to get one even if you wait a week, so he made sure to secure one right away. Others he knew weren’t so lucky.
“I know at least like five people that are on the waitlist. That just doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen,” he said.
Spice says that this type of thing happens every semester and assures that there is a method to the madness.
“We’re back to our norm, and we still haven’t run out of parking completely on main campus,” he said. According to Spice, level five of Gateway Garage is always the last place to fill, and the waitlist system is based around this.
Spice said that every day, open spots on top of Gateway Garage are counted around 11 a.m. This data over the course of the week is analyzed, and based on the number of open spots, people are released from the waitlist and allowed to purchase parking passes.
He suggests that students struggling to find a spot should always try Gateway Garage first instead of crossing their fingers for a spot in a lot.
Wright feels that while the beginning of the semester is always crowded, this semester feels fuller. Much like Spice, his gauge is the top of Gateway Garage, a place he felt always had available spaces last semester, but now it feels difficult to find parking even there.
Wright said there needs to be more parking spaces on campus, adding he knows many people who park in Alpine Garage and have to walk a longer distance to class. His sentiments were echoed by another student, Ashley Martinez, who was initially put on the waitlist but was able to get a pass before classes started.
Martinez said that she has had to give rides to numerous friends who couldn’t get their hands on a parking pass. She said she had one friend who swapped from an in-person class to an online class to cut parking out of the equation entirely, and another who is just paying any tickets they get as they hold out for a pass to open.
Spice said that this phenomenon contributes to lots filling up quickly. While people who park on campus without passes take the places of people who have purchased permits, Spice said a few weeks into the semester, repeated parking tickets typically deter them from continuing to occupy spaces for people who purchased permits.
Despite having a pass, Martinez said getting to class on time is feasible but not convenient. “I mainly go to Dwire and Columbine for classes … I know it’s only week two, but I’ve tried coming at different times of day, and I still cannot find parking close by,” she said.
Martinez also said she felt there was confusion on who can park where.
Because of the difficulty that Martinez had finding parking, she purchased an additional pass on top of the one she already had to give herself more abundant parking options.
Another student, Kaden Savala, initially wanted a central pass for the whole week. However, once he was waitlisted, he cut his losses and got a pass to park at the Hybl Center and in central campus lots on Fridays. If he needs to get to central campus on a day besides Friday, he parks at the center then takes the shuttle.
Spice said that there is a surplus of parking on campus lots farther away from central campus, like the one for the Hybl Center, and the cheaper permits for these lots never get waitlisted. The 100 series lots, another cheap option, near the University Hall and 500 series lots, which are free but must still be registered for, near the Ent Center usually have lots of available spots. There are shuttle stops at these lots that can take students to classes.
Photo courtesy of UCCS Photography Database.