Students who were issued parking citations at the Oct. 8 home football game against Southern Methodist University can expect a nice surprise in their wallets soon, after a proposal was approved by the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee to reimburse them.
“TPAC has endorsed (the proposal) and we are already communicating with Parking and Transportation Services and Auxiliary Services to move forward with reimbursing those tickets,” Student Government Association President Shaun Theriot-Smith said.
Theriot-Smith said students can expect to be refunded by the end of the semester.
Around 50 citations were issued, all of which were for V8 or V10 violations, which consist of parking on or blocking a driving lane or blocking a sidewalk, crosswalk or parking on the grass, respectively.
Each citation costs between $35 and $40, and doubled in price if they were not paid within 30 days.
Theriot-Smith said the reimbursement would cover any increases that students may have experienced.
Being on a Thursday, the parking situation added stress for commuters and students trying to get to class.
SGA senator and TPAC Chair Eliott Kauffman stressed that there was still available parking at the game, students just weren’t looking in the right places.
“At no time did we run out of parking,” Kauffman said. “There was parking at the Energy Research Park, but we ran into the same problem as always which is students don’t generally want to park there. Students are more willing to drive for an hour in these parking lots than go to ERP and take a 15-minute shuttle back here.”
SGA said they were not on top of their game in regards to the parking situation, and that they could have increased marketing about the available parking at ERP.
“Nonetheless, students were ticked off about the fact that we were not on top of the situation,” SGA Vice President Tanzeem Chowdhury said. “We did have more shuttles, but that was not marketed at all. We tried to reach out to our constituents but, at the end of the day, it’s hard to reach out to this many students.”
Aside from ERP parking, Chowdhury said SGA and TPAC should be and are working to provide more options to students for on-campus parking.
“I think the solution is how can we improve parking, and that is something that TPAC is looking at very seriously,” Chowdhury said.
Theriot-Smith said that SGA would like to help prevent parking problems in the future by planning ahead and holding all campus organizations responsible for presenting parking plans to TPAC.
Most student organizations are responsible for presenting to TPAC ahead of an event to plan accordingly. Organizations like Frontier Fiesta presented a parking plan in October for their event that occurs in March.
Athletics was aware of the Thursday game, but did not present to TPAC until two weeks prior to the event.
“That’s, in my view, not acceptable when we have all of these other entities that do the same thing,” Theriot-Smith said. “Generally speaking, if they know an event is happening on campus, especially during the week, they should be presenting to TPAC and Parking Transportation Services and plan ahead of time.”
Kauffman said he would like students to know that SGA and TPAC are working to alleviate the parking problems and plan for additional parking that will help students in the future.
“We are all here because we are impacted just as much as the next guy,” Kauffman said. “We want these problems to be solved, and I care when students feel like they can’t make it to class. We care, we are listening, we are working on solutions and we are making progress.”
Kauffman said TPAC is actively seeking solutions and has plans for additional parking in the works.
A new parking garage will be built next to the UH Law Center and should be completed by 2019, but construction will displace spots. Kauffman said in order to offset this loss, 1,000 new spots will be added to the ERP lot by Fall 2016.
“It’s not something that’s an immediate fix because you can’t just put up a parking lot in three months, that’s not how it works — but there are plans in place that will help alleviate the problem,” Kauffman said.
“A thousand new spots at ERP is a giant, giant expansion. ”
ERP parking is not a solution, those of use that pay premium to park in the garages or close to campus did not pay to have to park all the way out at ERP and have to wait on shuttles or can afford the extra time needed to make it on class on time because of work or other responsibilities. If the University is going to close down so much parking on a game day then just close classes that day or have stadium parking at ERP instead. I know neither of those would ever be considered because of the money that would be lost. Fact is the University should have made more than one parking garage when they built the new stadium, that was the time to tackle this problem.
Building garages is expensive and takes quite awhile to pay off, plus interest. Not to mention they’re definitely not a sound financial decision if they’re only fully utilized a few times a year. Offsite parking with a shuttle route makes more sense.
TPAC and UH Athletics should work with METRO to make it super easy for fans to get to games via Houston’s existing bus and rail system. Perhaps an all-inclusive travel pass that includes parking at a fan’s nearest METRO Park & Ride station with round trip travel on METRO’s nice commuter buses and the METRORail Purple Line. Also guaranteed commuter bus service heading back home and a phone number if fans have difficulty navigating. Make it all $10 or something like that. No having to worry about gas, traffic, finding parking, etc. They could promote a specially-made webpage that easily explains how it works with nice graphics, personal routing maps, etc.
TPAC could also give discounted parking rates or priority parking to those that are carpooling to the game. Promote both programs at the games, and the parking situation should be less worse.
Actually metro was free that day for any person wearing red UH clothing. The marketing for that was sub-par but it was available. Everything else you said was spot on.
There is one weekday football game at UH every year. I know you paid for a better parking pass but again it is only a single day out of a year, you can deal with it.
Glad I never dealt with parking passes on campus. Taking METRO is less stressful than finding parking on campus, dealing with traffic and other issues. Much cheaper too. Students should really consider taking METRO on game days and in general.
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