To the editor,
I'm sure you are aware, but the parking situation on this campus throughout the morning until midday is absolutely terrible. Short of a half-mile hike, or a 15+ minute park-and-ride on the green line shuttle, parking is a huge stress for everyone.
This is obviously not an easy problem to fix, and as President John B. Simpson has signaled before, UB 2020 must address these issues. Essentially, we need parking garages and there's no way around it.
It's a costly fix, sure, but whether they're underground or not, increasing the parking capacity even a measly 10 to 15 percent would alleviate a lot of the frustration and endless parking lot circling for many, if not all.
Additionally, if we're going to increase this school's size by 10,000+ faculty and students, forget wishful thinking, it will be absolutely necessary.
At the moment I'm sure that it's a cheaper alternative to deploy more shuttles – one more for each of the shuttle lines running on North Campus (or, two more for the red line and one more for the green line). Personally, I'd be more inclined to wait for a shuttle if it would come more frequently than 10+ minutes apart.
If the idea is to discourage students that live in the university residences from driving to campus and further clogging the parking, you MUST increase the transportation around campus (besides the copious amounts of bussing sent to the Ellicott Complex).
On the subject of shuttles, two red line shuttles during the day are not nearly enough. For how far the red line must travel, it only makes sense that three (or more) be deployed at any given time. (And on that note, do you know how frustratingly long of a wait it is when the red line goes down to one shuttle at night? Absolutely ridiculous).
The green line needs to be streamlined as well. I was not impressed or amused by the trip I took from Flint Loop to Flint Village, BACK TO FLINT LOOP, and then (finally, 5 minutes later) to the park-and-ride lot where anyone unlucky enough to catch it when it got there was in for a 5 to 10 minute game of sit-and-wait. (Most notably because your driver decided to take a smoke break.)
If a DIRECT line to campus is the idea, then do that, instead of trying to hit every point in between.
These are just some ideas, but the policy makers in your department need to get out of their ivory tower and realize that parking on this campus is becoming an absolute disaster for students and faculty alike. And if angry emails aren't enough, I dare the parking and transportation vehicles that go around ticketing wayward cars to themselves try to find parking spots, or to simply COUNT the available, general parking spots they encounter while on patrol.
I would imagine that they would encounter less than five per hour, and even then, it'd be by sheer dumb luck, which is apparently the name of the parking game at the moment.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Mason
Administrative Assistant
ncmason@buffalo.edu
