Members of Parking and Transportation Services released a preview of next year's undergraduate parking policy - including changes to permit costs and plans for the new Bryan Center parking garage - at a small meeting Thursday.
Catherine Reeve, director of Parking and Transportation Services; Melissa Harden, assistant director for parking and traffic; and Peter Murphy, assistant director for transit services, described the policy and answered questions from the nine students that attended the meeting, organized by junior Donald Wine as his legislative individual project for Duke Student Government.
"Nothing has really changed that much," Reeve said. "I guess that's good news if you don't like change."
The five-level Bryan Center parking garage, scheduled to open in August, will contain 558 spaces with two entrances, one from the Bryan Center parking lot and the other from Science Drive.
About 500 of those spaces will be reserved for permit holders and 50 spaces will be open to the public for hourly, paid parking. After 5 p.m., visitors will be able to park in permits spaces for a fee.
Reeve said those fees will be used to offset permit costs. "Obviously with a new deck, there are new expenses," she said.
Garage permits will go first to those who held permits in the Divinity School parking lot for the 2001-2002 academic year and lost their spaces when the lot was eliminated to construct the new Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences.
Next, Reeve said, permits will be offered to Duke employees who work near the Bryan Center.
Although administrators and student leaders discussed reserving garage permits for students, Reeve said she could not confirm that permits would be reserved for students.
"We always said we would look at it, but we're not prepared to commit to it yet," Reeve said.
Between the Blue Zone on West Campus, the Red Zone on East Campus and parking on Central Campus, 2,469 spaces will be designated for undergraduate students, Reeve said. She added that with an average of 2,400 undergraduate permits sold annually, all undergraduate parkers will be guaranteed a permit somewhere on campus.
Costs for Blue Zone and Red Zone permits, now $180, will increase by $10 to $190. Central Campus parking permits, normally free, will cost $100 next year and eventually the full residential rate in 2004-2005.
All non-resident, or commuting, undergraduates will be accommodated in the Blue Zone. This year, PTS allowed non-resident undergraduates to buy permits in parking areas other than the Blue Zone because of a decrease in parking spaces due to construction. Those non-residents will be able to renew their permits in those lots again next year, Reeve said.
New pay stations, which will accept cash, credit cards and eventually Duke cards, will also be installed in the Science Drive and Bryan Center visitor lots. Parking in those lots will cost $2 per hour. Students may also be able to pay citation fines from those stations. Parking fine rates will not increase for the next academic year.
With seven home games scheduled for the football team next year - four games in September, two in October and one in November - students expressed frustration over having to move their cars frequently from the Blue Zone to accommodate visitors.
Harden said the system was not meant to inconvenience students, but rather to accommodate visitors. "You're not really going to want to put folks who are tailgating for the football game in the parking deck at the hospital," she said.
However, she also sympathized with students' views, adding that most Iron Dukes for whom those spaces are reserved do not use them. "There's definitely a better way to use those spaces, and we've talked with the athletic department about that," she said. "I can't guarantee you we'll see anything [different] next year."
Harden encouraged students to join the parking list serv for updated information, and Reeve also encouraged student feedback. "We need that kind of input, even if it's 'I don't like that'," she said.
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