University puts the brakes on parking rates

	David Ricketts, director of University of Iowa parking and transportation, announced that the Univeristy will not increase parking rates for staff, faculty, and students in the coming fiscal year. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Parking rates will not increase for staff, faculty, students, and the general public in the coming year, says David Ricketts, director of UI parking and transportation.

“We looked at all the other pressures on the community and decided that we would just take a break from increases for the year,” he said.  “It seems increasingly likely that staff and faculty will not be seeing much in the way of raises, and students may well be faced with increased tuition.

“Like anyone who reads the news these days, we’re very aware of the stress,” Ricketts added. “We decided that we could use reserves to accomplish much of what we wanted to do in the coming year in terms of maintenance and needed improvements, and we could put off the rest,” he said.

The UI parking system is self-supporting and depends on revenues from parking to pay for lot and ramp maintenance, as well as for expansion and improvement of the system.

Ricketts says that while use of student lots was down slightly, he’s not seen any decline in the use of staff and faculty parking.

“The economy is not visibly decreasing staff and faculty parking usage—at least not yet—but it may be slowing growth,” Ricketts says. “We’ve seen major increases in the numbers of people using the discounted bus passes and taking advantage of the employee van pools. We have 1,643 staff and 2,309 students using bus passes and there are a record 877 employees using 85 vans.”

On the other hand, Ricketts says use of the parking facilities on campus by the public seems to be on the increase. He says he does not expect the UI Hospitals and Clinics’ decision not to subsidize free patient parking to effect usage of the hospital ramps.

“Of course, we’d like to see more people take advantage of the various available public transportation options, but that’s not always possible, especially for patients,” he says.

by Charles S. Drum