There are over 24,000 students on the Boca campus and less than 12,000 parking spaces. Not even half the student body can park at once.
Many students feel the pain of the parking problem on campus.
Some spend up to half an hour looking for parking before a given class time. Well, $13 million, eight months, and 800 parking spots later, you may feel the parking pressure alleviate. Just a little.
Ground broke on Parking Garage III on March 4. The construction is set to last until the beginning of November, according to Senior Vice President for Financial Affairs Dennis Crudele. The four-story parking garage will stand in place of Lot 11, near the stadium. The 135 parking spots that make up Lot 11 will be replaced with a 943-spot garage.
The project is partly funded by the $76 transportation and decal fees issued by the university to students and faculty, according to Crudele. He could not confirm the percentage of funding coming from fees.
“We couldn’t keep up with the surface parking,” Crudele said. “It was really necessary for us to add additional parking spaces to the Boca Raton campus.”
The last parking garage was built in 2003, when FAU’s total headcount on the Boca campus was a little over 17,000 and could fit about 940 cars. Since then, the headcount has grown to over 23,000. Another parking garage was necessary to meet the needs of the growing number of students on campus, according to Crudele.
But more can be done to ease the trouble of parking for students.
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Been there, done that
Whether it’s fixing schedules or making apps, some universities have found creative solutions to help make parking easier that don’t involve months of construction.
1. Mapping it out
Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.
FAU gives carpooling students parking spots close to buildings as incentive, but Carleton College takes it a step further. Their website has a system that integrates Google Maps to allow students to find other carpoolers in their area. This system lets commuter students get in touch with each other and carpool, which means less cars taking up spots. Other schools have taken similar actions, like the University of North Carolina, which utilizes third-party services like Zimride — a website that connects students commuting to college campuses by area to make carpooling easier — to help connect carpoolers.
Source: Carleton College, Zimride
2. Staggering schedules
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
A method devised by Rutgers which staggers class schedules to have classes 40 minutes apart — unlike the ten minutes between classes at FAU — giving students time between their next class to leave so others have time to park.
Source: Rutgers University
3. No cars, no problem
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Instead of changing the current parking system, CPSU decided to reduce their crowding by reducing the number of cars on campus. They offer a vanpooling program — groups of students interested in commuting together rent a van and drive to school together. CPSU has a monthly membership fee of $40 for vanpooling per student. The program pays for itself because revenue from monthly fees covers gas, maintenance, and vehicle purchase, according to CPSU Traffic and Parking.
Source: California Polytechnic State University
