Parking options decrease for students

Finding a place to park has always been a challenge for students at the University of Cincinnati, but it might only be getting worse as the number of students is ever increasing and the city of Cincinnati announced new parking restrictions Jan. 29.

The new restrictions will affect students who park on the north side of UC’s Main Campus on West Martin Luther King Drive.

Traffic traveling eastbound on West Martin Luther King Drive from Clifton Avenue to Woodside Drive is prohibited from parking between 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Monday through Friday, and traffic traveling westbound on West Martin Luther King Drive from Burnett Woods Drive to Clifton Avenue is prohibited from parking between 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The changes were initiated to improve traffic flow, according to a press release from the City of Cincinnati Department of Transportation and Engineering.

But Timothy M. Jamison, acting city traffic engineer, said the changes were made
multiple reasons.

“One was we were aware that there were a fair amount of crashes through there,” Jamison said. “We were studying the signal at the intersections there, and we thought there were a lot of crashes, but they weren’t really there, they were along the midblock, mostly due to parking cars, cars pulling in, cars pulling out, people doing strange things.”

The restrictions will likely help reduce the number of crashes and improve traffic flow, but for students who normally park there, they will now have to find another location to park their vehicle.

“They‘ll either be forced to find parking elsewhere or to go into the garages at UC,” Jamison said. “They are just going to have to find other parking options.”

Jamison also alluded to an uptown plan, where the restrictions on West Martin Luther King Drive were going to have to happen eventually.

“It was part of a long-range plan,” Jamison said.

Confirmations of UC first-year enrollment were up 14.9 percent at 5,044 students in 2009. Where are those additional students going to park their cars?

UC is largely a commuter school with a record number of student enrollment — they will be inclined to pay for a garage parking pass, which costs anywhere between $75 and $300 per quarter.

Something has to be done to improve parking and increase the number of parking spaces available for students in the area surrounding UC’s campus.

If nothing is done to make the current parking situation better, students will have to park farther away from campus, pay for a parking pass, risk getting a ticket or towed because they can’t find a spot. UC needs to keep up with its growth.