New parking policies include price hike
By Jacqueline Womack
The Collegian
• Daily parking permits, $3 per day. Available at dispensers in parking lots.
• Semester parking permits, $68. Available at the cashier’s window in Joyal Administration building.
• Parking permits are usually required from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday---- — Thursday and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. Permits aren’t required during weekends and state holidays, unless there is a special event.
• Parking fines, $25 per violation.
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If you’re a student who uses a daily parking permit, going to classes at Fresno State just got more expensive.
As of Aug. 28, the fee increased from $2 to $3 a day.
“There are going to be signs all around campus telling students about the daily parking fee increase,” Amy Armstrong said, public information officer for the University Police Department. There are 11 permit-dispensing machines in the various parking lots on campus. “If people are coming on campus more than once a week, it’s going to be a better deal for them to buy the semester permits,” Armstrong said.
Students like Danielle McCurdy, a Fresno State English major, believe that if a student takes more than one or two classes each week, then a semester pass is better.
“Unless you’re only going to be on campus once a week, there’s really no point in paying for a daily pass,” McCurdy said.
“It’s kind of pointless to pay for a daily pass when in the end it’s going to cost you more than if you just bought a semester pass,” McCurdy said.
Amy Elliott, a transfer business student, agrees.
“I don’t think daily parking permits are for students on campus every day,” Elliott said. She also believes that $2 for a daily parking pass is more of a reasonable price than the new $3 cost.
There’s no increase for the semester permit fee, which is $68. And parking fines — which are $25 for no permit, $20 for going over time on a meter and $275 for parking illegally in a handicapped spot- will also remain the same.
The money from parking and tickets goes to different things. “We separate the money into different things: fees and fines,” Armstrong said. “Anything people pay to park goes back into lot maintenance. And parking tickets, that money goes into alternative transportation.”
Alternative transportation covers areas such as the Rideshare parking lot, rideshare parking passes and the carpooling scrip program for faculty and staff. Armstrong said there are more than 5,400 parking places on campus. She said that despite the large number of Fresno State students — about 20,000— the number of parking spots is enough. “When you think about it, you don’t have 20,000 students on campus at one time,” Armstrong said. Armstrong said that more parking is on the way, however. “They’re planning a new parking structure near the new Rec Center,” she said. “When it’s finished, it will add 144 spots.”
Parking will also be managed through the use of a new, solar-powered electronic system that will monitor lot Q, which is east of Cedar and north of Barstow. The system will alert students, via a video board, when the lot’s spaces are full. But some of the lot’s former entrances will be blocked off as part of the system.
Traffic and parking may be affected by other road work such as the closing of Chestnut Avenue. Chestnut Avenue between Barstow and Bullard avenues will be closed while it is being widened.
Armstrong said that the library’s ongoing construction won’t affect student parking. “They’re [construction workers] not going to be using any of the parking lots.”
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