Protest over parking fees
April 7, 2008
The possibility of a drastic increase in parking fees at the University of Baltimore has caught the attention of staff and students, some of whom are planning a midday walkout and protest on Thursday.
Full-time students, who pay an estimated $171 for an annual parking pass, would pay more than $1,000 a year to park under the proposed rates if they use a space for more than 8 hours per weekday.
The new rates, which will be the subject of town hall meetings this spring before going into effect next year, are based on the amount of time a person’s vehicle occupies a space and, for staff, on salary.
University Spokesman Chris Hart said the rate hike is, in part, motivated by the need to fund the Fitzgerald at UB Midtown, a mixed-use development planned for the Bolton Yard Lot, and represents an effort to reclaim the $1 million the school spends each year on parking subsidies.
Brian R. Shepter, a third-year law student and president of the Student Bar Association, objects to what he sees as the university administration’s sudden solution to the problem and top-down approach, suggesting instead a gradual increase in rates over two or three years.
“Students weren’t involved in the process and now we’re being blindsided with this.” said Shepter, who is also concerned about the likelihood of satellite lots and shuttles during construction of the Fitzgerald project.
“No one’s contending that parking rates shouldn’t go up,” he said. “They should definitely go up. The question is, why can’t we phase it in? They’re going from a million dollar deficit to back in the black in one year…Give students time to calculate for these things.”
Hart said the university seeks to strike a balance between the interests of students, many of whom commute, and the school’s mandate to make the most of its facilities — in this case, converting a surface lot into a public-private retail and residential development that will include a gated, staffed 1,250-space parking deck.
“They’re telling us loud and clear that it’s expensive for them. We’re trying to tell them about value, value-added,” Hart said Friday. “There’s more dialogue to be done.”
Do the students have a legitimate gripe? Or are they lucky to still be paying what would amount to below-market-rate parking prices?
BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer
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Hi. I read your article, and it’s wasn’t clear to me why students would even need a car.
Isn’t the university already accessible by Light Rail, Bus, Subway, and Train?
Isn’t the Mount Royal Light Rail pickup right at the Bolton Yark Parking Lot?
Isn’t there a subway stop just 4 blocks from the UB Campus?
Isn’t Penn Station (both Amtrack and MARC) only 1 block away?
Isn’t downtown only 1.5m away? That’s about a 12 minute bike ride, leisurly taken.
Doens’t the Baltimore Metro area already have nearly the most congested road
network in the entire country?
Why in the world would an Inner-City college studen, of all people, need a car?
Much less pay all that money to store it in the middle of Baltimore, at market rates?
The car ownership rate in Baltimore is lower than in NYC, because, quite frankly,
it’s not only unnecessary, but unpractical, inefficient, and excessively expensive.
How much does it cost to fuel and insure any car these days?
My college experience 1998-2001 (Private Liberal-Arts) consisted of packing up
my jeans, t-shirts, and a few other basics into a duffel bag along with my bicycle.
I took the bus to the train station, took the train to Amherst, MA, and another bus
to the campus. If I needed to get anywhere, it was the bike, the train, or a bus.
Buying and parking a car never even occured to me. Why would I have needed one?
How could I ever have justified the cost?
I failed to understand from you article why any of these students even need cars.
I work in Silver Spring, and currently own a house near canton. A short bike ride
to the train station is all that’s necessary, and certainly much cheaper,
and less stressful, than driving or owning a car.
If the University is raising the rates. I support that.
We should tax them for their stupidity, and roll the extra cash into better rail infrastructure,
like the baltimore red line project, for example, or how about bike lanes & bike parking,
like most other cities already did years ago?
“Tax them for their stupidity” of driving a car to school? If there is a Dumb Daily Record Blog Comments Top #10, put his one down as a contender for the title.
Unfortunately, unlike Lee Watkins would have you believe, public transportation isn’t an option for everyone.
I was a victim of crime as a 1L. If you feel comfortable walking the four blocks to the subway in the dark, good for you. I just wasn’t about to put myself in a dangerous situation again.
The UB shuttle, which I did try, was never reliable enough to ensure that I would get to class on time. My car was the only transportation I could rely on.
I wish Baltimore was a city where public transportation was both safe and reliable. I do ride the subway to and from work everyday now, but that’s only because I can do so during daylight and populated times. Until people can feel safer on Baltimore’s mass transit, they’re going to drive.
Clearly, Lee is right in his remarks considering that everyone knows that student and staff all live within close proximity to UB to make a non-car commute feasible. We also know that students and staff never have meetings or obligations off campus to which a car would be necessary.
Lee, perhaps you could provide us with cites regarding your comment about what “most other cities” did years ago.
As an aside, you couldn’t pay me enough money to take a Baltimore City bus, subway, or light rail anywhere on a given day, much less on a regular basis.
Many students are also parents. I assume Lee will provide free emergency transportation as needed to these students.
Thankfully, I was never a crime victim like AlisaBS above, but my attempts to use mass transit to UB also failed. My first semester, I drove about 20 minutes to a commuter bus lot to take the bus to the State Center, where I would catch the UB shuttle to campus. I would have to catch the 6:30 bus and get to school 2 hours early most days because the 7:30 and 8:30 buses rarely actually showed up. Given that my classes ran until 8 and 11:45 pm, I am lucky that my 30-40 minute waits alone at the deserted State Center complex resulted in no harm. I finally stopped riding the bus altogether when the driver was stabbed by a rider who did not like be censored on my route on a day I didn’t have class.