GUEST COMMENTARY

By Alex Miller

During my term representing undergraduate students on the
Transportation Policy Committee, I found it to be one of the most frustrating
and trying experiences as part of student government.

I have sat on numerous committees and worked with
administrators, faculty and staff on countless occasions, but have never had
such trouble or felt so pessimistically about students’ position on an issue.

Every time we would tried to make advancements we ran into
one of two problems: Either we could not convince the faculty and staff members
(who outnumbered us) to support proposals, or, the committee would reach a
decision only to have it ignored by superior administration officials (an
unfortunate side effect of being solely an “advisory” committee).

Sadly, many of these issues could have been avoided if we
had support from the student body, but every time we tried to reach out to the
students and get them to support proposals, or even just voice their opinions,
we would get almost no response.

I don’t have to tell anyone that there are serious problems
with parking and transportation here at UCSD. Probably everyone has heard the
predictions of dramatic price increases, a great reduction in the number of
available spaces and a generally worse situation — and unfortunately they’re
all correct.

Due to the natural limitations of parking and space
available on campus, and the current rate of expansion of buildings and other
infrastructure, we can expect decreases in the number of available parking
spaces. Even worse, we are likely to lose the most convenient parking spots,
such as the recently lost North Campus Lot, and become more dependent upon
distant lots such as East and Regents Parking.

So how do students go about improving the parking
situation?

The answer is pretty simple — they need to make their voices
heard.

One of the biggest reasons that preference is given to staff
and faculty is that whenever something happens they immediately flood
Transportation and Parking Services and their own supervisors’ e-mail inboxes
with complaints. This pressure then leads T&PS to change its policies, even
after they have been approved by TPC.

Students, on the other hand, relegate themselves to whining
on Facebook and not actually working with administrators or making their voices
heard. Even when attempts are made to reach out to students (such as by holding
forums) only a few students show up (a recent parking forum had a total of four
undergraduates show up, less than the number of T&PS personnel present).
Decisions are made by those who show up — if students want the situation to
improve, they must make themselves heard.

Now I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up and say that the
parking situation will improve simply by sending a few e-mails.

While it’s crucial for students to get involved, the fact is
that the amount of space for parking is inherently limited — there is only so
much free space on this campus, and that space is being increasingly taken by
new buildings (such as North Campus Housing). The only solution to this problem
is building parking structures which are extremely expensive (approximately $50
million each).

Therefore we are presented with three options: First, risk
running out of parking spaces. Second, build numerous parking structures and
see parking-permit prices rise to more than $1,000 per year. Or third, stop
on-campus expansion (something that will obviously never happen).

Unfortunately none of these options are very good choices —
all will require great sacrifice on everyone’s part.

There are so many problems with on-campus parking and
unfortunately no easy solutions to the problem.

The sad truth is that great sacrifices will have to be made
in the coming years and due to students’ lack of involvement and participation
they will almost certainly get the short end of the stick.