Parking demand declines at UNCG
GREENSBORO — Four years ago, the parking situation had gotten so desperate at UNCG that the school was about to sink $13 million into yet another new parking deck.
“We almost did it,” said Scott Milman, director of auxiliary business operations at the university. “Then at the eleventh hour, we realized we needed to step back and look at what we’re doing.”
Milman said what they were doing, through creating more parking spaces and building more decks, was encouraging students to bring their cars to school. The situation grew worse every year.
After working with consultants, the school instead decided to look at alternative transportation, commit to pedestrian design on campus and find a way to discourage people from driving.
The result: This year, even as UNCG saw record enrollment, demand for parking passes dipped nearly 3 percent.
Milman says the Higher Education Area Transit, or HEAT, buses have helped most.
“Now, after doing the HEAT buses for four years, there’s no one who doesn’t know about them,” Milman said. “Our campus has really embraced the idea.”
But another part of the decline in on-campus parking has been honesty about its shortcomings.
“I’m the only person I know who has something to sell who gets up in front of customers every year and says, 'Don’t buy this. It’s not good. You won’t get what you want,’ ” Milman said.
The Parking Services Department even changed its name, Milman said, because “no one was really being serviced.”
UNCG sells parking deck passes for $420 a year, 24-hour surface parking permits for $285, park-and-ride passes for $185 and spots in its long-term lot on Lee Street for $25. But like most campuses UNCG sells far more passes than it has spaces, effectively selling most students the right to look for a parking spot if any are left.
Milman said that system isn’t in the best interests of students, the school or the long-term growth of the university.
“It doesn’t make us money,” Milman said. “We have to pay to build the decks and the lots, maintain them, have parking employees, process tickets and fines, boots and towing. And all that revenue goes to the state; we don’t keep any of it.”
But more important, Milman said, is that the school’s master plan calls for a slow phasing out of parking spaces to make room for buildings such as the new education school, which replaced a former lot.
To help move toward that future, the campus closed College Avenue — once a main campus thoroughfare — to car traffic. It has also created and extended bike lanes, installed more bike racks and are opening its few new parking spaces off-campus, where students can leave their cars and ride in.
New students, for their part, have a hard time imagining UNCG was ever more car-centric.
“Frankly, I don’t see why anybody would have a car here,” said Emily Wheaton, a freshman from Hickory. “There’s the HEAT bus, you can ride your bike almost anywhere and you can take the city buses too, which are really good. Who needs a car?”
Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: The campus of UNCG.
Search News-Record.com
closeSearch News & Record Article Archives
Not all of the newspaper's content appears online.
*There is a fee for downloading some older articles.
