by Izamary Rios
Over the last couple of years, I had not realized how much of a problem the parking was around the CMU campus. I recently moved to 23rd and Orchard, so it is much faster for me to bike to class; except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I have to carry a six-pound text book.
About a week ago I had to be on campus at 9 a.m., so I left my house 15 minutes before, thinking it would be enough time; boy was I wrong.
I went to three different parking lots before I finally found parking, but when I did it was a dirt lot on seventh and Bunting. Needless to say, I was five minutes late to class.
The parking around here is outrageous. I paid 110 dollars for a commuter parking permit so that I could find reasonable parking, yet there is never enough parking. As the university expands, more parking is needed, and I do not think anyone has realized how much of a problem it is becoming. I think it would be a little more beneficial to start building up rather than keep expanding down seventh street. A lot of students pay for a commuter parking pass so they will not have to walk far, yet we are all having to park really far away. Rather than just focusing on the buildings, the university should have a year where they focus on making the parking better all around.
“They should build more parking so that everyone can stop parking in front of my house and the people that live here can actually park,” Breanna Royer, a student who lives on 12th and Mesa, said, “During the day I hate to move my car at all because by the time I get back some student with a commuter pass has taken our parking spaces in front of my house.”
Not only is commuter parking atrocious, but residence parking is not any better. When I was a sophomore, I lived in Grand Mesa. Again I never found parking so I would end up parking in dirt lots a couple blocks down. One day I parked in a really sketchy dirt a lot across from Taco Bell and my license plates were stolen. There were no lights on that dirt lot and it was honestly a little scary. I think that if the university had more parking in places that were not sketchy and dark, incidents like this would not happen.
Fortunately for me, this is my last year, but I would never bother paying for a parking permit ever again. Maybe years from now when I come back to visit, the university will have added more parking.
