Driving Situations on Campus

Dear President Witt,

Driving through campus is not a very easy thing to do. A lot of students are really lazy and do not feel like walking to class, so they decide to drive to class or get a friend to drive them. This causes very bad traffic flow on University Boulevard and by the Ferguson Center. Students have the right of way at every cross walk as long as there is not a stoplight where the crosswalks are located. Even if there is a crosswalk where a stoplight is located, students still walk across when cars are coming and that is how accidents have already happened and are going to continue to happen. I drive through campus almost everyday and it is definitely not worth the gas and the time wasted, when I could have walked there in the same amount of time. It takes forever to get through campus driving because you have a ton of students walking through the streets and crossing crosswalks when they leave class, so the traffic builds up. This problem can be resolved very easily. The hiring of crossing guards would reduce the amount of students walking across when they are not supposed to; and with a slight alternation between students walking and letting cars drive would make the flow of things so much less intense.

With all the traffic going on campus during the day, not allowing freshmen to have cars on campus would be a great idea to implement to eliminate most of the congestion on campus. As freshman, most students do not know their way around campus as well as an upperclassman. When I was a freshman, I did not have a car until the spring semester. I needed to get used to the campus first before I started driving amongst it. Once I brought my car here, it still took me a while to get used to the traffic flow and navigating around campus to find the quickest routes.

Driving an through campus is not the only problem, finding a parking spot is also a huge issue with driving. There is not enough parking on this campus, especially residential. I myself live in a Fraternity house and I can hardly ever find a spot in front of my house, where I am supposed to park. The University definitely needs to add more parking to residential and commuter areas. There are only two places you can park anytime you want on campus. Those two locations are the Ten Hoor parking deck, which is located directly behind Ten Hoor, and the Ferguson Center parking deck which is located right in front of the Ferguson Center. Both of these parking decks are for students with a specific decal or you can pay three dollars to enter. Those two parking decks are pretty convenient places to park if you need to go to the Ferguson Center or even if you do not want to walk to class, but the University needs to put more of these type of decks around the campus. Instead, they add more parking decks to the nicer dorms, such as the new Ridgecrest. When I was a freshman, I lived in Burke West and my second semester, when I had my car; I could hardly ever find a parking spot. It was terrible to have to drive up and down the road trying to find somewhere to park. It would be great if the University added more parking to the smaller dorms, so that kind of nonsense does not take place.

With limited parking for any ordinary day, game day becomes even more of a hassle when it comes to student driving and parking. The day before the game, transportation services always blocks off a lot of main access roads that many students use on a daily basis. They will not let you through unless you have a permit to park in that specific area, which is not a bad thing, but it does cause there to be more congestion on other roads around campus. The transportation services also makes certain dorms vacate the parking lots, allowing the access for RV’s, causing other student parking lots to become filled up quickly. On game days if you do not have your car parked a few hours before the game, it is really hard to find somewhere to park close to where you live or where your designated area is.

Overall, driving on campus is such a struggle and multiple things need to be accomplished before it can be very successful. Success of driving situations on campus would be to include crossing guards to regulate car and pedestrian traffic, freshman not being allowed to have cars, at least for their first semester, and more parking available on campus. If these changes are implemented, the campus would be a much safer and friendly environment for drivers, students, parents, and faculty. Hopefully, the University will begin to realize these important matters on campus and take action on them as soon as possible