Grapevine newsletter for University of Mary Washington faculty and staff.
COVER STORY:Snagged a parking space? Better hang on to it!
Even the chief of police sometimes plans his day around parking.
When he's on official business, he can stop wherever the squad car takes him. But for mid-day errands or a lunch off-campus, he's a civilian like the rest of us.
“I have the same problem everybody else does. I end up parking on Sunken Road,” said James “Jay” Snipes, UMW director of police. “Until we get the parking deck built, there is just nothing we can do. Unfortunately.”
Snipes -- and most faculty and staff at UMW -- seem to be taking a “we're all in this together” approach to the storied parking woes in which more than 750 Fredericksburg campus faculty and staff vie for 493 spaces.
Students have it worse with 1,700 spots to accommodate 3,200 students, 1,500 of whom are commuters.
UMW employees come up with strategies to beat the parking crunch: They arrive early. They don't use cars throughout the day. They have friends and family pick them up for lunch. When asked for suggestions for the parking-challenged, Snipes threw up his hands.
“Walk,” he said with a one-sided grin.
UMW officials are working on the problem, Snipes said. Bernard Chirico, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, led the committee that commissioned consulting firm Desman and Associates to do a comprehensive parking survey which was completed in October of 2003. The firm counted spaces, studied parking, analyzed traffic patterns near the campus, and met with groups of commuters and campus-based students.
The firm, Snipes said, understood and took into account the basic problem: This campus needs more parking, but won't get it until the planned 400-space parking deck is completed. UMW officials said the target date for opening that facility is spring 2006.
With that in mind, Desman and Associates advised how best to use the parking now available.
One tangible result of the study is far fewer “mixed-use” lots shared by students, faculty and staff. Another is color coding of lots: Signs are color coordinated with the parking stickers of the groups meant to park in them. Faculty and staff park in blue-coded areas.
The new configuration added 41 faculty/staff spots to campus, Snipes said, mostly in lot 2 (formerly Westmoreland) and lot 26 (formerly Jefferson ). Commuters who once parked in those lots now must leave their cars in lots 7 and 9 off Alvey Drive .
That was by design, Snipes said, to help commuters get used to parking near where the new deck will be built, directly behind Goolrick Hall on Alvey Drive.
Designating lots by numbers, rather than names, is meant to help newcomers to campus find their way to the appropriate areas, Snipes said. And the use of numbers clears up what to call parking areas.
As an example, Snipes sited the area between Willard and Monroe halls. In the past, some called it the Willard Lot. Others called it the Monroe Lot. Now it is simply “Lot 15.”
“Numbering really does help eliminate in-house confusion as well,” Snipes said. But the Chief understands that associating numbers with lots can be difficult.
Since he sometimes forgets the designations himself, he has posted an electronic “cheat-sheet” of name changes on the shared campus “S” drive.
And, Snipes said, each driver soon will learn the number of the most important lot — the one he or she generally parks in.
To find the list of new lot names on the campus “S” drive, go to S > FAC-STAF > Police > Revised Parking Lot Names.
--Neva Trenis
| Bill Rechin, creator of the nationally syndicated comic strip Crock, illustrated this page. The Spotsylvania County, Va., resident has experience parking on the UMW campus, he said. He often was here when his granddaughter, Katie Morgan '02, was a student. |
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