Staff Editorial

Time limits on parking meters unfair to students

While parking has long been an issue at UH, it seems as though students are constantly finding that the University’s “solutions” only bring about new problems.

From creating new parking lots further away from campus to reclassifying existing lots and creating new parking passes, each answer has ended up compounding the problem with no end in sight.

A prime example is the row of parking meters in the Robertson Stadium parking lot that allow people to park for only one hour.

Given that all of the meters surrounding Robertson allow for up to 10 hours of parking, the drastic reduction for this group strikes many as unnecessary.

Factor in that most classes last more than one hour, and the limit becomes more odd. 

The University may have implemented this low limit to encourage these spaces to be used for visitors or to allow for more students to use them.

The latter makes sense, especially for students who don’t take back-to-back classes — they can use them for their first class and search for another spot later.

But given the limit of one hour, those students still run the risk of either receiving a parking violation or having to leave class early to move, unless they take classes that meet three times per week — a small percentage of the student body.

Some would argue that it makes no sense to have 10-hour meters mere yards from one-hour meters, but there is a logical compromise that can be reached.

Why not extend the one-hour meters to four hours or at least two hours? Even at two hours, students would have enough time to attend most classes and even reload the meter if they want to stay in that spot.

At the end of the day, the University’s parking policies should be aimed at facilitating the education of its student body, and that starts with students being able to get to class and stay there. The University’s only incentive to do nothing is if it would rather continue collecting the fines from violations that these meters tend to produce.

But hey, that would only mean lower tuition rates or more garages to be built with all that extra money, right?

We didn’t think so.

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