Options Weighed for Parking Solutions

As new buildings rise on campus parking lots, the Chancellor's Special Advisory Committee on Parking is trying to build its own scaffolding of solutions to UCSB's perennial parking problems.

It has researched and defined the main elements of the growing crunch between cost and parking availability--more than 1,000 existing spaces will be lost in the next three to five years--and laid out multiple options before meetings of students, faculty, staff, and anyone willing to attend the two public forums. The committee also maintains a Web site <http://bap.ucsb.edu/capital.development/csacop/csacop.htm> where comments and suggestions are posted almost daily. This site is currently linked to the UCSB Home Page.

As summarized by the committee's report, the possible options range from night and weekend or event parking permits to increasing all permit rates; banning day parking for students living within two miles of campus and charging more to store residents' cars; a bike permit fee; a differential rate structure based on geography or salary level; increased support for the Transportation Alternatives Program; and various policy measures to increase funding sources for parking facilities beyond the pool of campus users, such as factoring parking replacement into new building costs, or an infrastructure tax, or lobbying for UC policy changes, or joining with Santa Barbara County to construct a structure for I.V. and campus parking.

There is no particular priority to the order of the mitigations suggested, noted Gene Lucas, chair of the advisory committee, though some measures would clearly take longer than others to implement. The public response so far has been encouraging. He has found that, despite the intense passions stirred by some proposals, the tenor of the comments has been "restrained." And he has been the main presenter and contact person for the committee.

Some of the possible options are contradictory, but at this point in the process the committee is sifting suggestions, gathering information, and preparing a set of draft recommendations. "We're trying to be creative to minimize the pain," said Lucas, a professor of chemical engineering and associate dean in the College of Engineering. "We want a high benefit-to-cost ratio."

Once the draft recommendations are ready they will be presented to the campus community and response solicited, Lucas said. Those comments will be analyzed before the committee sends its recommendations on to the chancellor around the end of March or beginning of April. Lucas cautioned that the committee may decide to forward only some of its suggested solutions at that time; others may follow at a later date.

Lucas, who has been involved in past efforts to grapple with parking, vowed that he would push for permanent policy solutions. "I'd really like to fix these problems for the long term," he said. "We are certainly going to try."