Summer Will Bring About Changes in UWM Parking and Transit

Due to maintenance projects being done to take care of structural issues in the garages, all of the parking garages except for the one located in the Union will be either completely or partially closed during the summer, according to the director of Parking and Transit, Prasanna Nanda.

That being said, at least one major parking garage will always be open during the summer. The summer maintenance for the parking structures is met with a hard deadline of Aug. 15, 2018 with a $1,500 per-day late penalty on the contractors if they exceed the deadline, according to Nanda.

In addition, the daily maximum for parking in the Pavilion and Northwest Quadrant will increase from $6 to $7 in 2019, according to Nanda. He also said that the semester permit rates in the Northwest Quadrant for reserved parking will increase from $1,080 to $1,200.

Furthermore, direct bus routes will no longer run directly from Waukesha to the UWM campus due to the construction on Interstate 94 – Zoo Interchange, according to Nanda. This means that students and faculty who originally took the freeway flyer must transfer busses downtown.

In the face of campus-wide budget cuts, structural changes, and debt, the Economic Benefits Committee (EBC) met with Nanda on March 28 for a presentation reviewing the 2018 projections regarding current transit methods and changes for students and faculty.

“A lot of concrete reparations have to be done and it will impact all garages on campus for the summer. It’s going to take about six to eight weeks per garage. It will be disruptive for sure for anyone that parks in those garages,” Nanda said. They are not going to offer any permit parking for any of the garages in the summer time. Luckily some students and teachers do not attend campus during the summer, so the amount of usage is reduced and we feel we can offer parking for everyone in the summer through the campus area.”

“We are an auxiliary unit so we don’t receive any tuition or public funds so all of our funding is self-funded and are responsible for all of our expenses,” Nanda said.

The total revenue from parking for the 2017 fiscal year was $5,310,000, with 48 percent of it coming from parking permits.

Upon hearing this, Joseph Mougel, the chair of the EBC and associate professor of photography and imaging, raised some questions about the possible snowball effects or raising rates.

“Have you thought about people potentially saying this is not as cost effective? One way to think of it is I am basically using 60 cents on the dollar to pay for this pass as opposed to 100 percent. I guess what I am thinking that can potentially happen is more people can opt out, which means fewer passes will be sold, which then means maintaining the ability to pay off those debts by 2024 is going to be strained, which means raising those rates again and more people opting out which can cause stress financially,” Mougel said.

The 2018-2019 Transportation Services budget stated that the “rate increase for NWQ and Pavilion is mainly due to overcrowding and higher than expected demand. The garage fills up by 9 a.m. on average, while Sandburg with a daily max of $8 has on average 70 open spaces throughout the day. The goal is to spread the demand to Sandburg to maximize parking spaces.”

Another issue raised was how to prevent people from breaking parking rules, while limiting parking citations.

Sandra Pucci, EBC committee member and associate professor of linguistics, parks in Chapman Hall and said that there has been no parking five times already this semester. She asked if the lots were being oversold.

“A lot of them are saying I only get a ticket once a month so that is cheaper than a permit, and if you aren’t consistent with the ticketing then it’s like playing the lottery and they are going to do it,” Pucci said.

Nanda said that the lots were not being over sold, and referenced reported confusion with the signs and proposed that the signs be changed using specific colors. He also emphasized that people who do indeed pay for parking get what they pay for.