More spaces, lower prices not ideal

Kim is the vice president of internal affairs for the Graduate
Student Association.

By Dorothy Kim

This campus, especially the undergraduates, should be careful
what it wishes for ““ because we just might get it.

Recently, the Daily Bruin has run several articles on the
projected July increase in parking fees. In these pieces, most of
The Bruin’s energy and attention have been turned towards the
plight of the undergraduate population and especially USAC’s
reaction to the proposed fee increases. But a campus with more
spaces and lower prices is not necessarily the ideal scenario for
UCLA.

Although Transportation Services often refers to itself as
Parking Services, everyone should realize that Transportation
Services is exactly that: a separate entity of this campus whose
sole goal is to provide adequate and varied transportation ““
and thus access ““ to the UCLA campus.

Like so many other units on this campus, its budget has been
impacted negatively by last year’s energy crisis. An inflated
electricity bill, in addition to lower projected revenues from
parking fees, have forced Transportation Services to cut back
several new projects such as additional parking, to defer some
maintenance ““ i.e. painting ““ of the parking
structures, and to decide not to put up new pedestrian signals.

The first two projects that Transportation Services have decided
to delay make logical sense. Since creating new parking costs
anywhere between $22,000-33,000 per space, I can understand why
Transportation Services wishes to wait on this project. Likewise,
the painting of the parking structures can easily be delayed
without any real impact on the people parking in UCLA lots. But how
can increasing campus safety by placing pedestrian signals
throughout campus be considered a non-essential item on the
budget?

“Logic” and “visions” are not words that
describe this campus entity. This is the same group that spent last
year vehemently declaring that BruinGo!, the program that allows
students to ride the Big Blue Bus for free with their Bruin cards,
was not cost-effective. They also claimed the program was
unsuccessful while simultaneously defending the Campus Shuttle
system.

This year, after spending a little money on better advertising,
Transportation Services has declared BruinGo! a success ““ but
now they say they cannot continue funding it next year because they
do not have the money.

The cost of BruinGo! last year came out to about $700,000 of its
$1 million allotted. Transportation Services biggest revenue comes
from parking fees; these support around $31 million dollars in
service expenditures. About $3 million dollars of this budget goes
to support the Campus Shuttle system.

In other words, if you use BruinGo! to get down to Westwood from
campus, the expense to Transportation Services would be $0.45. If
you used the Campus Shuttle ““ which also takes much longer
““ to get to Westwood, Transportation Services pays $1.70 for
each ride. Nonetheless, they still declared BruinGo! not
cost-effective.

To Transportation Services, any kind of alternative
transportation ““ buses, scooters, walking, cycling, etc.
““ do not seem to be a priority. They do not make any money
off of these alternatives, and since they are a business
enterprise, money matters.

Even when it is a part of their operating guidelines,
alternative forms of transportation are not encouraged. For
example, Transportation Services is required to turn over all
revenue from parking tickets on the UCLA campus to support
alternative forms of transportation, namely their carpool and
vanpool operations.

Though they have stated they encourage carpooling and
vanpooling, their numbers reveal another story. In their
“UCLA Parking Five-Year Plan Consultation” booklet from
May 2000, they write that they have 1,278 carpools and 3,454
participants. Included with these statistics is an over 35,000
count of parking permits available on this campus.

However, their “UCLA Parking Five-Year Plan
Consultation” booklet from January 2002 clearly indicates
their “vigorous” support of these two programs.

They currently have over 36,000 parking permits available, 1,038
carpools with a participation count of 2,257. Their
“vigorous” support of vanpools has yielded an increase
of 3 vanpools and 35 more riders while their carpool support has
seen a decrease in participants by over 1,000.

In anyone’s vocabulary, these statistics are not examples
of “vigorous” support.

However, Transportation Services has a more serious problem
aside from meeting campus needs that most people do not seem to
realize. Transportation Services and the University have an
agreement with the City of Los Angeles called the Transportation
Mitigation Monitoring Agreement.

In essence, the agreement states that if the number of vehicle
trips on this campus exceeds 139,500, the city will force the
university to stop all new construction. There are sensors at all
the entrances and exits of campus, the Medical Center and Lot 32,
and a trip consists of a car coming in and leaving campus. The 2000
count for daily number of trips comes in at 113,436. Last quarter,
the fall estimates revealed that the number of trips had increased
to close to 120,000.

In a presentation to the Graduate Student Association and its
Forum, Transportation Services was perplexed as to the marked
increase of trips in Fall Quarter 2001. This increase in trips has
happened with a decrease in the number of available parking spaces
and the beginning of Tidal Wave II, which will bring 4,000 more
students to UCLA in the next ten years. Once the Intramural Field
parking lot is finished and opened for business, this trip number
will go up by at least another 1,000.

If the campus goes above 139,500 trips, all new construction
will stop until the university can re-negotiate with the city. With
the pace of city government, this may take several months. This
means the new Medical Center addition, the Intramural Field Parking
Lot, the Men’s Gym addition, any and all new classroom
buildings, any of the new on-campus housing options will halt. The
campus may face a situation in which it will definitely not have
enough parking, not to mention enough classrooms, labs, hospital
space, and student housing to meet the current and growing demand.
In my list of priorities for university education, classroom,
living and office space rank much higher than a parking space.

The most frightening thing about the whole scenario is how close
Transportation Services is to letting this happen.

Without a vision for access to the University that goes beyond
parking, Transportation Services sends UCLA closer to a rather
apocalyptic vision of total campus shut-down a la Mike Davis.

Even knowing the consequences of increased car traffic on this
campus, Transportation Services cannot seem to find the money to
support their one large alternative transportation program:
BruinGo!.

My warning to the campus and to those undergraduates in
particular who have vented their frustration about the increase in
parking fees is this: be careful what you wish for.

If we get what most of this campus seems to want, this
university will be another example of institutional
irresponsibility colliding with human folly, ending tragically in
human and environmental disasters.