Parking Rates on an Upward Trajectory

Competing proposals for UCSB in the coming academic year call for significant increases in parking rates.

The campus Parking and Transportation (P&T) Committee, the principal avenue for such proposals, has recommended raising the current $35 to $45 a month for most faculty, staff, and students--$540 a year.

Other fees would also rise in P&T's proposal, with reserved parking up $20 a month for an annual fee of $1,080, for example.

Under P&T's proposal, the new hike is the first in what is expected to be four equal increases of $120 a year for general parking. With this model, in the fifth year the rate would rise another $204, for a total projected annual cost of $1,104 in 2005-06.

According to graphs of projected parking supply, demand, and monthly rates posted last year on the parking services Web site such fees were not expected before 2003-04. What has changed, according to Everett Kirkelie, acting vice chancellor, administrative services, and campus planners, are several factors that accelerated building plans for the east side and central area of the campus; the need to consider three parking structures (two of which will be wholly underground); and the decision to increase fees sooner rather than later to repay parking loans.

To test these interpretations, sociologist Bruce Straits, head of the Academic Senate's Faculty Welfare Committee, offered an accelerated approach. Though speaking personally and not for his committee, Straits argued that raising the monthly rate to $55 would define true parking demand "before it is too late to reverse plans or halt construction on the three proposed structures."

"For many years parking at UCSB has been relatively cheap," explained mathematician John Doner, chair of the P&T Committee. "Now the situation is changing rapidly."

No fewer than four new buildings are scheduled to begin construction between the coming fall quarter and fall 2002--the Engineering Sciences Building and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) on lot 10; the Marine Sciences Research Building on the remainder of lot 1; and the Life Sciences Building facing UCen Road. The road will be widened and redesigned to end in a turn-around plaza next to a subterranean parking structure with landscaping on top (the lot 3 site).

Revised plans now place this proposed structure three levels underground and beyond the present footprint of lot 3. It will hold an estimated 735 spaces and is to be constructed strongly enough to support a five-story building at some later date. The parking project's cost is around $35 million. Though a smaller version of this structure had been planned (see 93106 of July 24, 2000), the CNSI, which will have underground parking for around 780 vehicles, is on a fast-track and must be built first, Kirkelie explained. Outside architects and contractors have been hired for the CNSI job.

Another 900-space parking structure that would be primarily above ground, like the Mesa structure, is under consideration for lot 27, west of the Events Center. It could break ground in the fall of 2003 and be able to replace lost spaces when lot 21 becomes a new academic building a few years later.

It is long-standing UC policy that each campus's parking operation be self-supporting. The current five-year parking rate plan should produce around 1,500 spaces and two new underground structures, Kirkelie estimated. "The rates collect equity to pay down the debt for these new facilities," he said. "It's like making a larger down payment on your home mortgage to keep interest costs lower."