Garage won’t solve parking problem
Shuttle system from stadium parking is a more cost effective solution

If there is one issue that my friends continually bug me to write about, it has to be TCU’s parking situation. I too must agree with nearly everyone else that it’s quite disgusting how hard it is to find a parking spot on campus sometimes. However, the commonly proposed solution by students and staff for the university to build a parking garage is simply not the right choice.

First off, what a lot of people do not realize about a parking garage is that TCU typically starts off major construction projects after finding a backer that is willing to provide a significant amount of funding. Normally, when someone is willing to donate several million dollars, they would like to see their name on the structure. As such, even though a parking garage may solve a major problem facing the university, TCU is hard-pressed to find a donor that is going to put forth that much money and have their name affixed to a parking garage. To put things in perspective, would you rather have your name on a new technology center or a parking garage?For most people, the former choice is the more glamorous or prestigious selection.

Nevertheless, let’s assume for a moment that TCU actually found a sponsor and built a parking garage. Such a situation would immediately raise a flag by the TCU Police as they would recognize the need for increased patrols and general security in the facility.

Parking garages typically have plenty of nooks and crannies for would-be muggers and rapists to hide in. Therefore, the overall cost of the garage would increase so that students could feel safe in using it.

Instead of a parking garage, a much more workable solution that very few people have thought about would be to run a shuttle service from the Stadium parking lot that go virtually unused nearly everyday. Instead of making new parking spaces, why not just more effectively utilize the ones already in existence? This plan should only cost a few hundred thousand dollars a year, vs. the couple million that would need to be raised over a period of years for a parking garage. The service could work much like the way the current campus busing system operates. Basically, students could park over by the Stadium each morning, and every five or 10 minutes a bus could come by to pick them up and drop them off on Main Campus.

Then again, the only pitfall facing this solution and any others is that TCU loses a substantial amount of money in parking tickets issued to students for parking illegally on campus. While students should remain idealistic that TCU would forgo extra revenue over convenience, the truth is that any parking solution falls on deaf ears when it is easier to continue to make money off the problem rather than fix it. I am quite sure that parking tickets increased since last fall after students were denied more of the 6,168 available spaces on campus when parking in front of Frog Fountain was designated faculty and staff only.

The only hope that we, the students, can have in getting a shuttle service established is if we urge our representatives in the SGA to voice our support of this idea. Until we do this in a collected effort, good luck on finding a space.

Robert Davis is a senior computer science major from Garland.
He can be reached at (r.d.davis@student.tcu.edu).

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