The future of campus parking is in for a bumpy ride.
Even though parking on campus may seem smooth this year with the opening of the university's second parking garage at 17th and R streets, the increase in parking stalls may be short-lived if plans don't move forward on a proposed parking garage at 14th and Avery streets, said Tad McDowell, director of Parking and Transit Services.
Especially when the university expects to lose 1,400 parking stalls on the east edge of campus over the next 20 years because of the City of Lincoln's Antelope Valley project.
This project will reroute Antelope Creek so possible flood waters won't harm homes, offices and campus buildings that sit in the flood plain.
But the trek toward more parking on campus won't be easy.
"It takes two years from the time a decision is made on the garage to the time someone drives a car inside it," said James Main, assistant vice chancellor of business and finance and member of the academic planning committee.
Other major bumps in the road include financing of the garage and final approval of the structure's construction timetable.
These bumps are making parking officials and administrators anxious to get the go-ahead from members of the academic planning committee and eventually, the NU Board of Regents.
The 14th and Avery streets garage was scheduled for approval at the July regents meeting but was later pulled from the agenda because officials felt they didn't have enough information on how to pay for the garage.
Also, committee members have yet to approve the project.
"The decision to move ahead with the parking garage will be supported by the committee, but it might not be as quick as administration might want," said Miles Bryant, president of the Academic Senate.
Because existing garages have relied primarily on financing from parking permits and fines, committee members now feel "enough is enough," Bryant said.
The university has reached a point where they can no longer ask some employees who make little more than minimum wage to pay more to park on campus, he said.
"I'm hopeful that we will find other ways to pay for parking instead of relying so heavily on faculty, staff and students footing the bill," Bryant said.
The university's parking garage at 17th and R Streets is financed through a 20-year parking bond. The parking bond is paid back through citation revenue, revenue for people parking at special events, parking meters and a four-year increase in parking permits.
Last year, parking meter prices and citation amounts increased.
The four-year increase on parking permits started during the 1999-2000 school year and will continue through the 2002-2003 school year.
Before the increase, in the 1998-99 school year, permits cost $11 a month for staff and faculty and $9 for students. This year, permits cost $25 for staff and faculty and $22 for students.
This is the third year of the four-year increase.
"It's not that parking is overly expensive at the university. It's that permit fee increases have had to be done at a faster rate," McDowell said.
If the 14th and Avery parking garage is funded the way the garage at 17th and R streets was funded through a 20-year parking bond and four-year increase in parking permits, staff and faculty would be paying $52 a month for parking and students would be paying $39 a month at the end of the fourth year.
This would cost a student with a nine-month nonreserved (blue or green) parking permit $468, compared to $198 for the same permit this school year.
"We're always open to other ideas. The main thing is to solve any future problems that we have with the Antelope Valley project, and we need to do it in a manner that is cost effective, convenient and safe," McDowell said.
Comparing UNL's parking fees and availability to other campuses is difficult because each campus's needs are different.
For example, faculty at the University of Nebraska at Omaha park for free, but that is because a garage was built through donations.
When faculty and staff pay raises are eaten up by permit fee increases, parking becomes an even bigger issue, Bryant said.
And more money will be needed to finance future parking garages as the university's master plan continues to progress.
The master plan, which details UNL's future campus environment, calls for another parking garage on 19th and Vine streets and garage construction on East Campus.
"We've just got to keep moving ahead," McDowell said.
The committee also questioned the proposed garage's usefulness and the location's accessibility to drivers.
Other parking options include building surface parking lots far from campus and busing people in or restricting underclassmen - freshmen and sophomores - from parking on campus.
But for now, parking officials will work diligently to move forward with the parking garage at 14th and Avery streets and hope to repeat the success they had during the planning of the garage at 17th and R streets, McDowell said.
"(Parking officials) will continue to try and solve the parking issues at the University of Nebraska, which is one of the reasons we came to work here," McDowell said.
"It's all about the conflict between space availability and money," McDowell said. "Because without adequate revenues, we cannot have adequate supply. And without adequate supply, we will always have complaints."
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