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The cost of parking on campus at Carolina likely will rise next year to help the University raise more than $2 million to go toward alternative transportation programs and parking lot debt.

The administration has endorsed a plan that would increase employees' parking costs from between $1.92 and $20 a month, depending on the permit type. The highest increases would be for permits with the most parking privileges, such as reserved spaces and access to all campus lots. Student parking permit prices also would rise.

Along with higher permit costs, the plan calls for a new night parking program and an increase in the departmental transit contribution.

Some elements of the plan, scheduled to take effect Aug. 15, first must be approved by the University Board of Trustees at its March 28 meeting.

All of the moves are intended to generate slightly more than $2 million in new funds needed to implement transportation and parking changes stemming from the Development Plan in 2002-03. The additional funds would increase the University's transportation and parking budget from $13.32 million to $15.36 million.

Of the $2 million, $500,000 will go to subsidize fare-free transit for a full year, and $600,000 will go to provide transit services to new park-and-ride lots and cover inflationary increases in transit. Paying off the debt on new parking lots will take another $365,000, with $140,000 earmarked for expansion of the student storage lot and $225,000 for a new park-and-ride lot. Another $300,000 is needed to make up the loss of permit and visitor-parking revenue because of campus construction.

The new park-and-ride lot will be a second lot at the Friday Center off N.C. 54 in Chapel Hill. Through a partnership with the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, a new lot also will open off Jones Ferry Road. The new Friday Center lot will have about 800 spaces, and the Jones Ferry Road lot will have 500 spaces. The lots are scheduled to open this fall. With park-and-ride, commuters get free parking and bus service to campus.

"As Carolina continues to grow, we will increasingly be talking about safe and easy options for access to the campus -- park and ride, transit, ride sharing and enhanced services for longer distance commuters -- instead of prior focus on number and price of available parking spaces," said Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Under the night parking program, employees and students without a daytime permit would be able to park in two lots -- Bell Tower and Bowles Drive -- for free, park in any visitor's lot by paying the hourly rate and would need to purchase a permit to park in other campus lots at night. The Swain and Morehead lots would shift from being partial visitors' lots during the day to all visitors' lots at night. Employees and students with daytime permits could park in permit lots at night without paying an additional fee.

For employees, night permits valid from 5 p.m. to midnight, Monday-Friday, would be $166 per calendar year, $122 per academic year and $61 per semester. Permits valid from midnight to 8:30 a.m. and on weekends in the Dogwood Deck would be $83 per calendar year.

With the two free lots, Bell Tower and Bowles Drive, free shuttle service would run to main campus locations. Security guards would be posted in both lots from 5 p.m. to midnight.

"It was very important to the University leadership that a significant number of free spaces remain available to faculty, staff and students in the most active centers of campus at night, along with enhanced security, to assure that the campus remains vibrant and accessible during the evening," Suttenfield said.

The administration endorsed its plan after reviewing recommendations from the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee (TPAC). That panel recommended several of the elements found in the administration's proposal, such as a night parking program and increasing the departmental transit contribution from .052 percent to .104 percent of payroll, which would up this from $400,000 to $800,000. And the daytime permit increase amount that garnered the most support among TPAC members was 20 percent, the figure that would apply to most increases in the administration's plan.

"TPAC did an extraordinary job in gathering campus concerns and input and deliberating on highly complex issues within a compressed time period," Suttenfield said. "If one looks closely at the final decision package, it has more similarities to the TPAC package than differences because of the excellent work of the committee."

One TPAC recommendation not followed by the administration was the call for a $265,000 contribution from the Budget Committee, a group of top-level administrators who control the allocation of a limited amount of discretionary funds. Suttenfield said administrators chose not to do so because of this year's particularly tight budget.

"With the current and projected budget environment, the University has little remaining flexibility to allocate resources to new programs unless it holds jobs vacant or abolishes others to create the funds. We opted to save jobs," she said.

And while the Budget Committee won't allocate funds to help cover the $2 million needed to balance the transportation and parking budget, Suttenfield pointed out that the University is contributing a total of $800,000 annually for fare-free transit and more than $20 million for parking deck construction, a figure subject to change as project designs are nailed down.

Suttenfield also said the administration followed TPAC's desire to spread the increased costs among faculty, staff and students, because "all of us are making a financial contributions to this package."

Tommy Griffin, chair of the Employee Forum, agreed that the plan shared the burden of higher costs. It will hurt lower-paid employees, he said, but "we have no choice but to support it" given overall budget constraints. He said he'd pay more to park if it prevented layoffs.

Griffin also said the administration's plan reflected TPAC's input. "They listened to what was going on," he said.

The most important thing now is for the campus to pull together on the issue, he said. "We all just have to be united."

Faculty Chair Sue Estroff, who served on TPAC, said she had a "mixed response" to the administration's plan. She said she was glad the plan includes more park-and-ride spaces and security measures but regretted that permit costs would rise. She also said the plan lacked "concrete evidence" of reliable and frequent bus transit to the park-and-ride lots.

Estroff said TPAC, which began meeting in September, found it difficult to come up with a viable alternative in the time it had to deliberate.

Suttenfield said she plans to overhaul how TPAC operates next year.

"I have a strong belief in the principle of continual improvement," she said. "I hope that we can reconstitute TPAC to assure that faculty, staff and student opportunities for input are as meaningful to them and as useful to Carolina as possible."

But while the process will change next year, Suttenfield said it's important to look beyond that and keep Carolina's long-term vision for transportation and parking in mind.

"In developing the campus master plan," she said, "the University community determined that preserving and enhancing Carolina's beauty, as well as making the campus less congested and friendlier to pedestrians and the environment, is a basic principle that will improve the quality of University life and should guide Carolina's growth.

"Building on-campus parking at a rate that would keep pace with that growth would compromise that principle. As a result, the University is committed to providing alternatives to parking on campus, and it is this commitment that drives the need for more funds to run transportation and parking programs."

Estroff said providing alternatives to on-campus parking was a fine goal but that a plan to make that happen needs to be mapped out in more detail with a commitment to implement it. Such a plan will be particularly needed for employees living beyond the area covered by fare-free transit, she said.

"How does someone who lives in rural Chatham County get here for work?" she said. "How does someone who lives in Durham get here for work?"

Suttenfield said she would like to develop a five-year plan to assure safe and easy access to and from the campus "no matter where our employees and students come from in the coming years."

"Clearly there is much important work remaining to be done on concerns such as these," she said.

Proposed UNC Parking and Transportation Changes

Summary: Pending final action on some aspects of a proposed plan by the UNC Board of Trustees on March 28, the University plans to implement several changes in parking and transportation. These changes would take effect Aug. 15, 2002. Following is a description of the new rate structure as well as new night, park-and-ride and commuter alternative programs, among other changes. The proposed 2002-2003 parking permit fee structure is as follows:

	2001-02 Employee Permit	2001-02 Student Permit	2002-03 Employee Permit	2002-03 Student Permit	Employee Bi-Weekly Payroll Increase	Employee Monthly Payroll Increase	Student Annual Increase
ALG/RS	$558	N/A	$800	N/A	$10.00	$20.00	N/A
ALG	$450	$450	$600	N/A	$6.25	$12.50	N/A
RESERVED	$450	$414	$540	$497	$3.75	$7.50	$83
GATED PARKING	$363	$334	$436	$401	$3.00	$6.00	$67
SURFACE PARKING	$276	$254	$331	$305	$2.30	$4.60	$61
PM, NR, SR, PDV	$155	N/A	$248	N/A	$3.88	$7.75	N/A
PR	N/A	$128	N/A	$230	N/A	N/A	$102
AM	$155	N/A	$186	N/A	$1.29	$2.58	N/A
MC	$115	$106	$138	$127	.96	$1.92	$21
NIGHT PARKING NP (5 p.m.-midnight)			$166 (annual)	$122 (academic)	$7.00	$14.00	$122
DOGWOOD DECK NIGHT/WEEKEND PARKING (Midnight-8:30 a.m.)			$83	N/A	$3.50	$7.00
The following lots will become gated as part of an overall strategy to reduce costs associated with controlling parking:
°	440 West Franklin St. -- North and South			(N1 lots)
°	Porthole and Morehead			(N2 lots)
°	Cobb, Conner, Paul Green Theatre Drive			(N4 lots)
°	Public Safety/Bennett buildings			(S1 lots)
A new pay operations visitor lot will be established at the Morehead (N2) parking area. The present metered spaces will be converted to hourly pay visitor spaces. The University plans to launch a night parking program. The program's basic policies are:
°	All faculty, staff and students (except freshmen) will be eligible to purchase night parking permits. Those with daytime campus permits will not pay any additional fee for night parking access.
°	The Bell Tower (BG) and Bowles Drive (S11) lots will be "open lots" -- no permit or hourly fee will be required for parking in these lots after 5 p.m. Free shuttle services will operate from the "open lots" to main campus locations. Security guards will be posted in both locations from 5 p.m. until midnight.
°	Other main campus lots will be regulated from 7:30 a.m. until midnight, and permits or an hourly parking fee will be required during these times. Signs will be posted at lot entrances to explain changes in the operation hours.
°	The Morehead and Swain lots will become visitor lots Monday through Friday (5 p.m. - midnight) and on Saturday and Sunday (3 p.m. - midnight).
°	Faculty and staff will be eligible to park in NG3 lots (reserved for faculty and staff only) by displaying a day or night campus parking permit.
°	Permits valid from 5 p.m. - midnight Monday through Friday will cost $166 per calendar year, $122 per academic year, and $61 per semester.
°	Permits valid from midnight - 8:30 a.m. weekdays and on weekends in the Dogwood Deck (which operates 24 hours a day, seven days weekly) will cost $83 annually.
Two new park-and-ride commuter lots will be opened. The Jones Ferry Park-and-Ride Lot, being developed in partnership with the Town of Chapel Hill, will be located at the intersection of University Lake Road and Old Fayetteville Road. It will serve 500 vehicles. Due to overwhelmingly positive response for a park-and-ride lot at the Friday Center off N.C. 54, the University is constructing new spaces for a second lot at that site that will serve 500-800 vehicles. The University will introduce an exciting new Commuters Alternative Program (CAP). The program aims to reward faculty, staff and students who do not drive a single-occupancy vehicle to campus. Just a few components of the program include new carpool and vanpool incentives, emergency ride back services for transit riders in addition to the current park-and-ride emergency service, and on-campus one-day temporary permits. Additional announcements about this program are expected soon. Construction will begin on the new Rams Head Center during the fall 2002 semester. The center will include a 700-space parking deck, bringing an additional 400 visitor parking spaces to mid-campus. The deck will have a recreation and dining facility on the top level with bridges connecting pedestrian pathways on the north and south ends. The deck is expected to open in 2004. Ehringhaus Field will serve as a temporary parking lot during the construction of the Rams Head Center. Plans call for one playing field adjacent to the School of Government to be returned for campus community use by the beginning of the fall 2002 semester. For individual units across campus, the departmental budget contribution for the transit program will increase to .104 percent of all a department's salaries and wages from all funding sources.

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