Search: Student Projects, Transportation

PROPOSED PROJECT: Transportation and Parking Services has the dual charter of providing alternative transportation and ensuring adequate parking for faculty, staff and students. These opposing priorities have become significant and stable barriers to any alternative transportation program. Developing new policies to reduce single occupancy vehicle commuters, and consequently emissions, would be a political debate for this campus. Yet the benefits to discouraging single drivers is significant, ranging from extensive costs savings related to parking infrastructure, to reduced traffic congestion in the local community, to a safer, more pedestrian friendly campus. The following strategies can help. - Alternate funding sources for Parking – The University could partly decouple debt-financing on parking structures from permit sales. If alternative funding sources can be made available, or if more uncertainty can be accepted in permit sales, then there will be greatly improved flexibility in the transportation manager’s ability to alter the incentive structure for drivers to find alternatives. - No New Net Parking Spaces – Successfully implemented on the UCLA campus, capping the total number of parking spaces is a very effective way to ensure less debt requirements. If supply is restricted, emissions will inevitably stabilize as opposed to continually increasing along with campus growth. Instead of investing in new parking structures, the University could put money into improving bicycle infrastructure, bus routes and other transportation alternatives. Additionally, pursuing housing developments for students and faculty in close proximity to campus, as the LRDP currently does, will allow the campus to grow without the need for additional parking spaces.