12/6/95

By Roy Summerford (summero@mail.auburn.edu)

OPTIONS OFFER PARKING RELIEF ON AUBURN CAMPUS, BUT AT COST

AUBURN -- How do you fit nearly 20,000 cars into just over 10,000 spaces? After wrestling with the problem for two years, Jim Ferguson, Auburn University's vice president for administrative services, has developed some options.

None of the options is ideal or cheap, but Ferguson says they offer improvement over the near-gridlock that has plagued the Auburn campus for years.

Holcombe and Wood, a Birmingham consulting firm, has identified potential sites for up to six new parking decks and three parking lots. The solutions range in price from $3 million to $20 million for construction.

The next step will be for the Campus Planning Committee to review the options along with the public input and make a recommendation to President William V. Muse, who will decide what proposal to take to the Board of Trustees.

"Parking is a problem that refuses to go away or get better," Ferguson said. "Everyone knows we have a problem, but there's no easy way to deal with it."

Parking decks would be a convenient and popular solution, but they are expensive Ferguson noted. If all recommended six parking decks were built, they would cost about $43 million and accommodate 6,196 vehicles. But more than 1,300 existing spaces would be eliminated, leaving a net of about 4,800 new spaces.

Individual parking deck costs, at $7,000 per space, range from $2.3 million for a 330-space expansion of the library parking deck to $20 million for a 2,866-vehicle parking deck west of Jordan-Hare Stadium. Other potential sites for parking decks are at the Conference Center, Haley Center, the College of Business Building parking lot and north of Jordan-Hare Stadium.

A major deterrent to parking decks, Ferguson said, is the likelihood of increased traffic congestion near the center of campus. "No one wants to make the congestion any worse than it already is," he said.

A popular solution at the public hearings has been a proposal to close Wire Road behind Nichols ROTC Center, move Max Morris Drill Field to the front of that building and turn the entire drill field, existing parking area west of the stadium and neighboring undeveloped land into a 3,176-space parking lot. Since existing parking lots would be replaced, the net gain would be only 1,366 new spaces for about $5 million.

A parking lot at Max Morris Field would be a five- to 10-minute walk for users, who would primarily be students. Ferguson said he would anticipate a reduction in illegal student use of faculty/staff parking areas, with a falloff in parking citations if more parking is available for students.

Any solution is likely to require a bond issue, which would have to be paid from parking revenues. To finance a $5 million bond issue would probably require a tripling of parking fees, which now are $30 for faculty and administrative/professional "A" zone and $20 a year for staff "B" zone. Students pay $15 a year.

Ferguson noted that Auburn's parking fees are the lowest among Southeastern Conference member institutions, and the availability of parking Ñ spaces for only 54 percent of the vehicle permits issued Ñ is also the lowest for the SEC members. Auburn's parking fees have remained the same for 12 years, during which the number of parking spaces has failed to keep pace with the growth of the campus.

The alternative to the various plans, Ferguson said, is to do nothing. "If we don't do anything, we will continue to have disgruntled people, and the police will continue to issue a lot of citations for parking violations," he said. "There's no way around it if we do nothing."

dec95:AU-parking