By Ben Macintosh
UPEI is continuously growing, with new programs, buildings and even new residences.
But despite all this change, one this has remained constant with UPEI: the lack of parking spaces.
When the passes first went on sale, some students spent over two hours waiting in line. A ridiculous wait for something as silly as a piece of plastic that you have to pay for.
This pass then, gives you the magical privilege of leaving your car in the lots of a school which you’re probably paying well over $3000 a semester to attend.
As someone who didn’t buy the parking pass this seems a little strange, we’re already paying so much money to be here why can’t parking be included? Not to mention the fact that there aren’t enough parking spots for all the people who bought passes.
So those students who spent around two hours of their day waiting for these passes might not even have a spot.
It seems they only way to ensure you have a spot is to show up at 8:00 am everyday, but that doesn’t work for anyone if they don’t have classes at 8:30 or 9:00 am.
If the parking isn’t even guaranteed why are students paying $118 a year to have a chance at parking in UPEI’s lots, seems like a pretty bad game to me.
That money could be used on anything else and probably be better spent, especially when there is a better option.
The Farmer’s market parking lot costs $0. The lot isn’t even that much farther than the UPEI lots, maybe an extra five minutes if you’re a slower walker like me. In the winter most of the lot of plowed so there are still spots to park, although you may have to wade through some pretty deep snow to cross the street.
UPEI doesn’t own this lot but during the school week, a third of the cars in the farmer’s market lot have UPEI parking passes because they couldn’t find a spot in the university’s lots.
To be fair UPEI does make it clear that the passes do not guarantee a space, but why are the passes $118 or more if they don’t guarantee anything. Why not just make parking free?
It would be unreasonable to expect UPEI to have a parking spot for every single student at UPEI, but they should at least be trying to increase the number of parking spots over time.
This obviously isn’t the biggest issue in the history of UPEI, but it’s only going to get worse.
If the university doesn’t address this problem students will spend more time walking to school than they do in class.