The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: HSU Parking

  • No Parking, No Progress

    No Parking, No Progress

    Study reveals complex campus parking problem with solutions still far-off

    In 2017, Humboldt State University commissioned a parking market demand study which found exactly what commuters knew—there is a problem with parking on campus.

    HSU has a total of 2,162 spaces, about 1,000 of which are general parking. These spaces are shared among more than 9,000 students, staff, faculty, visitors and administrators. The study found solving the parking problem might be harder than adding more spaces. Terrain is challenging, space is limited and HSU has a finite budget.

    Film student Alice Peterson had a panic attack the first time she had to park on campus.

    “It was raining really hard, I was late to class, it was the second or third week, there were no spaces and there was a lot of over-stimulation,” Peterson said. “My fight or flight kind of kicked in and I left.”

    Peterson has needed to drive to class more and more ever since. A load of heavy, expensive film equipment makes walking every day impossible. During her time at HSU, she has racked up almost $500 in parking violations because she is forced to park illegally or in spaces meant for visitors.

    David Lieb is the national director of higher education mobility planning at Walker Consultants, the parking consultant firm that HSU contracted to conduct the market demand study. Lieb worked on the study personally and said that although universities are a group of people sharing a common parking problem, HSU faces some unique issues.

    “You have a challenging topography,” Lieb said. “Everybody wants to park in a space that’s convenient to where they go, but there’s a limit to the number of spaces.”

    There is barely any room on or near campus to add a significant amount of spaces, which is why many students are advocating for a parking structure. But Lieb did not recommend a structure.

    “The shortage at this point is such that we don’t believe it would solve the problem,” Lieb said. “The survey suggested that there was more demand out there, but people were saying, ‘Why would I buy a permit if I’m not going to get a space?’ So if you increased the number of spaces, the people who are currently saying, ‘I’m not going to buy one,’ are going to buy one.”

    This process means the parking situation would remain the same if a structure was built, but the parking prices would have to increase to pay for the construction.

    “By what we calculated, parking prices would at least double or possibly triple,” Lieb said. “Our company provides design services for parking structures. We would be delighted to design a parking structure for you, but we’re not going to recommend it if we don’t think it’s the right solution.”

    Alternative transportation and ride share programs are already available through HSU.

    Jeanne Rynne, the associate vice president of Facilities Management, and Krista Paddock, HSU’s Parking and Commuter Services program coordinator, are working together to alleviate parking demand. All plans are in preliminary stages of development, but the long-term goal is to limit the number of cars that are brought to campus instead of adding more parking spaces.

    “We are looking at potential park-and-ride lots in the area,” Paddock said.

    There are parking lots in Eureka and McKinleyville that stand nearly empty during HSU’s busiest times. Those lots could be used as off-campus parking. HSU could then provide buses to and from the designated lots to limit the number of cars coming to campus daily.

    “We’re always trying to promote ride share with the Zip Cars and the Zagster bikes and the Jack Pass program,” Rynne said.

    Alternative transportation and ride share programs are already available through HSU. Both Paddock and Rynne said there are no concrete solutions on the table yet. For the time being, they plan on heavily marketing the programs that already exist.

    “We’re always open to feedback,” Rynne said. “We have the Parking and Transportation Committee and there’s two student vacancies.”

    Rynne, Paddock and Lieb all agree that parking is an incredibly emotional issue. Finding a space can take a long time. The study noted many commuters take longer to find a space than to travel to and from HSU, and HSU’s lots fill to 100% capacity during peak hours.

    Parking is stressful in a special way. No one studying or working at HSU needs additional stress, but money and topography appear to be blocking all the solutions.

  • OPINION: Parking pains

    OPINION: Parking pains

    What are students doing to avoid parking on campus?

    One thing that I was most shocked about after moving off campus was the impossibility of parking. I had heard rumors here and there but it never settled on me, the idea of living off campus sounds great, right? Little did I know that part of adulting here at Humboldt State was that you had to suffer through a shortage of parking.

    I live in McKinleyville, and I had to learn to plan my whole morning around parking. I wake up early and I leave at least an hour before my class so that I have enough time to find a spot. Some mornings are smoother and it will take me about fifteen minutes, but more often than not there are mornings where I’d rather walk on bare feet from McKinleyville to campus. The more people I met at HSU, the more I’d learn their strategies to avoid the dreaded daily task.

    I spoke with some students about this issue and here are their thoughts. As I asked these students about parking and driving to school, their first initial reaction would be a sigh or a sound of frustration.

    Justin Eicher, is one of many students who chooses to bike to school.

    “I park far away [from school] and bike from there to avoid this crap,”Eicher said. “That’s honestly the way to do it.”

    I was surprised to hear that a fair amount of the students that I talked to had a pretty similar trick. Based off of the people I briefly interviewed, a good number of students live within range of HSU and will walk or bike, on the other hand, many students drive to a certain location and bike or take public transit to school from there. I have found myself considering the same thing on the worst of days, it sounds so much easier to go and park at a friend’s house who lives near a bus stop and go from there.

    “On the days that I have to be at school all day, I will drive from my house to the bus stop in Eureka where I live, and take the bus to school,” Evan Goetz, a forestry major at HSU, said. “It saves me the effort and money to make the trip.”

    The issue of parking has become a game of how to avoid it or how to get there early enough to grab a spot. The students that have class at 8 a.m. tend to get the better end of the stick, but the rest of the students that don’t have a class that early need to plan accordingly.

    “I have to go to a friend’s house who lives closer to school than I do, park at their house, and take the bus with them so I don’t have to deal with parking at HSU,” Lauren Gaul, another student who lives in McKinleyville, said.

    Respectfully, limited parking should encourage more carpooling to and from campus, and many of the students that I talked to said they rode their bike for environmental reasons. The strategies that some of these students have are logical, but some have to go out of their way to avoid parking. Students find what works best for them whether they like it or not.