Students at American River College seem to have the same complaints about the hassle of parking at the beginning of each semester every year—such as traffic coming into the parking garage, the parking garage always being full, and staff parking lots having too many free spaces.
There are many possible solutions to resolve this ongoing parking epidemic.
The parking garage is one of the most popular places to park for students, which results in traffic at the stoplight turning into the garage, and at the entrance.
“I think we need to regulate the way we get into the parking garage. More entrances for sure,” said ARC student, Imani Smith.
There is always the idea of building another parking garage on campus, but that doesn’t seem logical because the construction would just add onto the already existing problems with commute.
One of the biggest problems students face when arriving to school is the commute itself while trying to find to a destination to park that is close to their first or last class.
Most students on campus park in our parking garage, which is located conveniently, in close proximity to Davies Hall, where a large majority of students have classes. The parking garage has five levels to it, but it always seems to be packed.
The resolution to this could be getting shuttles around campus that would pick up students at destined locations so that everyone isn’t waiting in the traffic line that occurs when entering the parking garage.
Shuttles are commonly found at universities, but some community colleges have them, such as Modesto Junior College for example.
Here at ARC we have a free campus shuttle service that only operates Monday through Thursday, during the hours of 5:30pm-10:30pm.
If we had more shuttles on campus, it would open up many parking spaces, because no matter where you park, you’d still have a way of getting to your class without going through the inconvenience of everyone trying to park in one parking structure.
Reducing the number of staff parking spaces could also be a possible solution to creating more available space for students to park.
There are additional places to park on campus other than the parking garage, including Lots A, B, C, D, E, G, X, and the stadium parking lot, but some of those parking lots are reserved for staff only.
Staff parking lots aren’t nearly as filled as student parking lots are because, justifiably, there are more students on campus than there are staff members.
I’m not saying that staff parking needs to be taken away and given to students, but I believe if our school would divide up staff parking lots and make them available for students, that could possibly be a work in progress in solving our student parking problem.
If the administrators at ARC would take some of these matters into consideration, our ongoing parking problem could possibly be resolved.
