As of Nov. 1 at 8 a.m. there are 510 parking permits available for purchase. Permits are once again available for students to purchase because research has shown that some of the parking lots are underutilized.
In past years, SUU sold an unlimited amount of parking permits. Any student who wanted to buy a permit was able to do so.
“This made the permit to stall ratio 3.4 permits per stall,” Emily Ballard, Supervisor of Parking Services said. ”This made it really unfair for the students who were purchasing a permit because their chances of getting a stall were so minimal there was no value for the permit at the point.”
Ballard did research on a local, regional and national level on reducing the permit to stall ratio. Through analysis of the parking situation here and the amount of student permits available, Parking Services decided to sell 1,200 permits at the beginning of Fall semester. Between the option of getting an SUU license plate or buying a permit, the ratio was lowered to two permits per stall.
A parking utilization study took place a few weeks after school began to research how many vehicles are in each lot in the a.m. and p.m. times. The study showed that two permitted lots were being underutilized–Lot 19 (Juniper Lot) and Lot 14 (Centrum West Lot).
“We found that both of the lots were highly underutilized,” Ballard said.“And we want those stalls to be full. We want people to use those stalls so let’s reopen some permits. We don’t want just empty stalls sitting there.”
A student can obtain a parking permit by logging into their MySUU Portal and looking under the app found on the left hand side of the screen under Parking Permits. A student permit costs $30 and lasts for the duration of the school year.
Story By:
Cassidy Harmon
Reporter2@gmail.com
