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Campus growth will squeeze University parking for the next several years, and
officials want to hear from employees on how the crunch should be eased.
While Carolina will add 206 main-campus parking spaces by 2007-08, projections
say there will be a 3,264-parking permit deficit by then. That's because the
increase in spaces won't keep pace with the higher permit demand expected to
come with the thousands of new employees and students projected to arrive on
campus.
"The growth issue has been with us for a long time," said Carolyn Elfland,
associate vice chancellor for auxiliary services. "Parking hasn't kept up with
demand for years. In fact, only about 80 percent of employees park at work, and
the figure is much less for students parking on campus -- just 15 percent.
"But the issue is particularly critical now because of the rate of growth."
These numbers from Facilities Planning show just how fast the rate will be: In
the next eight years, the University will spend an average of $120 million a
year on construction, whereas in the last eight years average spending has been
about $60 million.
Based on the projected timetable for Carolina's Capital Improvements Program --
which covers construction-starts through 2005 with build-out by 2008 -- demand
for permits will outstrip supply by 625 permits for the 2001-02 parking permit
year, which begins Aug. 15. The shortfall will peak at 4,935 permits in
2005-06.
Elfland said shortfalls will rise and fall from year to year. Although some
existing parking spaces will be lost permanently others will be reclaimed from
no-longer-needed construction staging areas and still others will be added as
new deck spaces.
For 2001-02, the 625-permit deficit means that 625 fewer permits will be issued
than the number needed for everyone who now has a permit to have one next year.
Of the 625, 491 will come from student permits and 134 will come from
employees.
Employee permits are allocated to departments based on a formula that gives 80
percent of the weight to the number of employees the department has and the
remaining 20 percent to those employees' years of state service. Individual
departments then decide how permits are distributed to their employees (see
http://main.psafety.unc.edu/tp/DPTALLOC/Index.html for departmental
distribution methods).
A free ride?
One way the University is considering to ease the loss of parking next
year is by joining the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro to offer fare-free bus
transit throughout the Chapel Hill Transit system.
Elfland said there appears to be significant support from both Chapel Hill and
Carrboro officials for going fare-free, although a final decision has not been
made.
According to Cheryl Stout, assistant director of parking services, about 10
percent of students and 8 percent of employees now purchase year-long Chapel
Hill Transit bus passes to get to and from campus. Many students buy short-term
transit coupons or pay the one-trip toll because they can't afford a bus pass,
which costs $250, Elfland said.
The potential bus ridership among employees and students is much greater than
the current amount. According to George Alexiou, a consultant helping the
University develop parking and transit options in conjunction with the new
campus master plan, about another 6,500 students and 4,500 employees live
within a quarter mile of a bus route which comes to campus.
Alexiou said going fare-free would likely entice many of these employees and
students to ride the bus. Experience elsewhere shows that fare-free service has
the potential to increase ridership by 50 percent.
But Carolina would need to contribute about $1 million in new money to make
fare-free bus transit happen, Elfland said. A student referendum slated for
Feb. 13 could clear the way for $500,000 of that to be generated through
increased student fees, but the money wouldn't be available until Fall 2002.
So if fare-free gets the green light from Chapel Hill and Carrboro -- and
Carolina agrees to it as well -- the University will have to come up with $1
million for next year without revenue from students.
Elfland said the campus Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee (TPAC) is
considering several funding options. TPAC -- a group of faculty, staff and
students -- will put those options to employees for feedback before it
recommends options to the University Board of Trustees for approval via the
chancellor. The options on the table are:
* Increase conference parking rates;
* Increase rate of temporary one-day parking permits;
* Increase late fee for all citations;
* Increase meter rates;
* Implement night parking program;
* Implement transit fee;
* Reduce or eliminate discounted parking coupons;
* Increase permit price; and
* Implement parking fee for state vehicles.
The transportation-fee option would cost each employee $1.25 per week if the
student fee increase passes and employees are charged at the same rate as
students, Elfland said. If the student fee increase does not pass, the
employee fee equivalent to what students now pay would be 90 cents a week. And
any transportation fee could be deducted from employees' paychecks on a pre-tax
basis, meaning the salary portion used to pay the fee wouldn't be subject to
income tax.
The towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro should reach a decision by mid-June on
whether they want to go to fare-free transit, Elfland said. But because the
University must have its plans for next year and its funding mechanisms in
place by April 1 so that employees will be able to make informed decisions
during parking registration, TPAC plans to develop two plans for next year --
one with and one without fare-free transit -- with roughly the same cost.
In addition to fare-free transit, a comprehensive solution includes more
frequent transit service during the day, transit service later at night,
improved transit service on campus and more park-and-ride lots. So, if
fare-free fails to materialize, TPAC will recommend implementation of some of
these other components to ease the 2001-02 parking crunch, Elfland said.
"We know that we need to have more transit, free transit, and more
park-and-ride lots in order to provide sufficient alternatives to on-campus
parking, and we know we cannot afford to do it all at once," Elfland said.
"Since we are dependent upon Chapel Hill's and Carrboro's agreement for
fare-free transit to become a reality or not next year, we are developing two
separate phasing plans, one has fare-free transit next year and the other has
it further down the line."
Before TPAC makes any recommendations to the chancellor to take to the Board of
Trustees, the committee wants employees to weigh in on their preferred
solutions and how they would like the University to pay for its share of
fare-free transit or other 2001-02 options.
Elfland said that one option being explored, for example, is a park-and-ride
lot in Durham with free transit to campus. Employees who live in Durham could
drive their cars to the park-and-ride lot, or even catch a Durham Area Transit
Authority (DATA) bus, and then catch a special Triangle Transit Authority (TTA)
shuttle bus to the campus.
Park-and-ride is a service whereby employees can park at an off-campus lot and
ride a bus to and from campus. Both parking and the bus ride are free with
Carolina's existing park-and-ride lots, and parking in a new Durham lot could
be free although that has not been negotiated, Elfland said.
But TPAC needs to know whether employees would prefer a park-and-ride lot in
Durham or would prefer to drive to a park-and-ride lot in Chapel Hill, Elfland
said. TPAC also wants employees to say whether they would rather have more
frequent transit service during the day or transit service later at night. (See
box about community forums.)
One improvement that could ease the parking crunch next year is a new
park-and-ride lot off Jones Ferry Road in Carrboro that would provide an
additional 400 spaces, possibly by the fall of 2001.
And data show that two of the system's existing lots -- Southern Village and
Eubanks Road -- are under-used and between them could accommodate another 360
vehicles.
"Regional transit is not developed to the point where employees who live
outside Chapel Hill can take transit to work directly from their homes, so
park-and-ride is a very important piece of the solution," Elfland said.
Elfland said park-and-ride also relieves traffic congestion on roads entering
and crossing campus. And that congestion, she said, is another reason why
Carolina needs to encourage alternatives to parking on campus: Already-crowded
roads would be hard-pressed to handle more cars on their way to parking spaces.
Better on-campus transit
Beginning next year more employees will need to get to campus by means
other than a car, and for that reason the University hopes to improve on-campus
transit so they can get around campus during the day if needed, Elfland said.
She said the University is considering two ways to do this. One is to reroute
the present U and Reverse-U fare-free bus routes to cover more area, although
without more buses this would result in service being less frequent. The other
way is to add more buses and add more routes, a move that would cost about
$360,000 a year.
Elfland said it's unlikely that the University will return to on-demand
Point-2-Point van service because of its high cost, which initially ran at
$660,000 per year. But Elfland said the University already provides emergency
ride-back service to park-and-ride lots and will check into the feasibility of
extending a similar service to bus riders who needed to leave campus on short
notice.
Looking beyond 2001-02, the University will take a multi-pronged approach to
dealing with the projected parking-permit deficit, Elfland said. Along with
transit and park-and-ride options, closer-to-campus housing and so-called
"travel demand management" strategies such as four-day workweeks and
telecommuting will figure into Carolina's plans, which will be checked out with
employees before being implemented.
In fact, a new position in the Department of Public Safety will be charged with
developing alternatives to parking on campus. The University really has no
choice on this score, Elfland said, as a recent state Senate bill requires
state employers to find ways to reduce the need for state employees to drive to
work.
"We're going to have to change the way we think about parking at Carolina, but
by thinking creatively we should be able to come up with solutions that we can
all live with," Elfland said.
Growing demands
Growth is driving the need to reduce the demand for parking at
Carolina.
In the fall of 1998 a University committee endorsed an enrollment increase of
6,000 students by 2008. That endorsement, which came after the committee
consulted with deans and other campus groups, resulted from a request by UNC
General Administration that asked UNC campuses to look at ways to accommodate
some 48,000 more students in system schools by 2008.
Carolina agreed to grow to help the state cope with the enrollment boom as well
as to qualify for the increase in state funds that would come with more
students. General Administration has since told Carolina that growth here will
be about 3,000 students because the state revised downward its estimate of
graduate students on the horizon and decided to stress putting extra students
in schools with existing capacity or with small enrollments.
Another factor driving growth at Carolina is the need for more research space.
A 1999 report by Eva Klein, a consultant hired by General Administration to
look at the system's overall facilities needs, found that Carolina had a
shortage of research laboratories of 871,982 square feet -- the equivalent of
11 Lineberger Cancer Research Buildings. The report also said Carolina lacks
159,447 square feet in office space, equal to the usable space of eight South
Buildings.
And a 1999 University-commissioned study by consultant Dan Paulien determined
that the campus would need an additional 4.4 million gross square feet of space
by 2008 to handle the expected enrollment increase and catch up to its peer
institutions in classroom space, library capacity, research lab space and
academic support space.
Last fall, state voters passed a $3.1 billion bond referendum to help pay for
such needs here and at North Carolina's other public universities and community
colleges. Carolina's share in new funding totaled almost $499 million, and the
bonds restored another $11 million that had been diverted for Hurricane Floyd
relief efforts.
Decks costly
Over the next several years, the bonds and other sources will fund some
60 Capital Improvements Program projects, the sites for many of which will be
guided by a new campus master plan designed to accommodate growth without
sacrificing aesthetics. A blueprint that will also guide growth for decades
after the current construction program is completed, the master plan will add
greenspace and make campus more pedestrian friendly.
While some existing parking will be lost to building footprints or greenspace
as a result of the Capital Improvements Program, the program will create a net
increase of 206 spaces by 2008. The bulk of those spaces will come through four
new parking decks. Longer term, the master plan calls for a net gain of
2,500-plus spaces, which would come from additional decks.
All of the decks are contingent on securing construction funds and getting
building permits, which may be held up because of issues such as air-quality
standards and vehicle capacity of the road networks, Elfland said.
Why not more decks? The first reason is lack of space. And the second is just
as basic: money. It costs $1,500 to $1,800 per space a year to pay for
construction debt and operation of a deck, Elfland said. The annual cost of a
deck permit is now $363, which means that deck construction/maintenance costs
must be subsidized by other sources or permit rates must increase to cover
them.
Elfland said the math behind parking deck construction costs reveals how
relatively affordable fare-free bus transit would be for Carolina: Employees'
share of paying for fare-free for everyone would cost the same as a deck for
just 275 people.
Employee input sought Feb. 26
The Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee has scheduled two community
meetings for Feb. 26 that will give employees the chance to react to campus
parking and transit options and review options for paying for them.
The first will start at 9:30 a.m. in the Gerrard Hall Auditorium and the second
will start at 1:30 p.m. in the fourth-floor auditorium of the Old Clinic
Building. The format will include an overview of parking and transit at
Carolina, presentation of alternative solutions and funding mechanisms, and
time for questions from employees.
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