🚀 go-pugleaf

[some rambling on CU parking.  Sorry; I can't send the followup to all the
cu groups from here]

davis@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Barbara Davis) writes:
>Point of information...  The garages are being paid for, primarily, with
>huge increases in parking fees for faculty/staff.  The monthly cost for
>my lot, which is an east campus lot, will jump by 300% before too much longer.

It was a long-standing rule for CU, and I assume it's still true, that they
were prohibited from building any sort of parking facilities with funds
other than those derived from parking.  That means parking-permit fees and
parking fines, period.  It explains both Barbara's comment about astronomical
fee increases, and the complaint about parking enforcement that started
this whole thread.

As for the parking and traffic administration problems:  the broken/fast
meters, bad enforcement, illogical terms, long lines and long waits to deal
with anything, and general bad attitude (all students are scum and everyone
who walks through the traffic office door is guilty) are a hallowed part of
CU tradition.  I've been out of CU for a long time, but I remember that the
parking hassles were already legendary when I got there (in '67!).  At
least registration isn't as bad as it used to be.

The parking garages are only the worst of what is a larger problem: CU's
insatiable "Edifice Complex".  I've come to refer to CU-Boulder as a "once-
beautiful campus."  Yeah, it's still pretty nice, but you'd think the place
was run by developers.  It's remarkable to me that they've had an enrollment
cap for...what is it, something like 20 years now?...but during that time
they've been building almost constantly!  How can so many more buildings be
needed...and what about the needs of students (who pretty much live there)
for a little breathing room?  If I walk around campus, my auto-pilot kicks
in...and I run into a new building.  I keep looking for the quiet spots,
the places where you could duck away and let your mind be still for a bit,
or walk in surroundings more dominated by foliage and bark than by mortar
and sandstone.  [oh, well, 'nuff of that old-fart stuff]

So...in one sense the parking garages are the worst of the craze to
eliminate the color green from the campus.  But to be fair, in another
sense they are an overdue answer to a problem CU created:  because it was
so constrained in how it could construct parking, for many years CU just
ignored the problem and let it be dumped on the surrounding area, mostly
the Hill.  People were parking south of campus, filling the numbered
streets nearly up to Baseline.  It seems that what CU is doing is not so
much coddling motorists as repaying some of its debts to the surrounding
community.  (And believe me, having taught an occasional course while I've
been "in industry", where I had to get on and off campus fairly quickly,
parking is *not* all that convenient at CU.)
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@raven.eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado
   ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.