The Collegiate Times article “Parking pass prices to rise with garage construction” (CT, April 13), highlights a rise in parking permit prices as a controversial topic among students. It seems to expect a future outcry from commuters who travel by car, complaining about the newly planned fees that will come with the construction of new garages. Instead I ask, as I’m sure other environmentally aware and farsighted individuals do, what about the indirect costs associated with these construction plans?
As pointed out in the letter, “Parking garages wrong for Tech” by Lyndsay McKeever (CT, April 13), the construction of parking garages will only encourage more vehicle travel.
In the same way that adding lanes to a highway does nothing to alleviate traffic in the long run, making parking more convenient for drivers does not eliminate the problem of excess of vehicle commuters where it first originates.
A parking garage is merely treating an unfortunate symptom of our population’s dependency on the personal automobile. More vehicle travel to and from campus means more pollution in our community, and to reiterate McKeever once more, this is a step backwards for Virginia Tech and an outright violation of President Steger’s Climate Action Commitment.
Furthermore, with more cars on the road, increased traffic congestion will follow. This will inevitably lead to road expansion and increased road upkeep, all coming out of university and town budgets. These costs will be passed on to us, the students.
As does almost every large infrastructure project, these parking garages will have unforeseen social consequences. By encouraging driving, we are taking more pedestrians off of the street and placing them into their own private steel containers, away from any interaction within the public realm. In large numbers, the effect that this trend has on community unity and individual lifestyle is astonishing.
The recent plan to include a small plaza at the garage entrance as a gathering location for future garage users is, to me, a classic oxymoron. To plan a type of community center in accordance with and next to a parking garage is not only a poor band-aid approach, but it is also one that may not be successful. Garage users will drive to campus because they want to get to and from school as quickly as possible. They will beeline straight to their cars, with keys in hand, and will not be looking for a bench to relax on.
With these thoughts and others in mind, I hope that university officials and, most importantly, the student body will reconsider the proposed parking garages and begin to calculate all costs associated with them. We will not simply be facing higher parking pass fees but also a lower quality of life.
A version of this article appeared in the Apr 15 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Actually if you had bothered to read the whole article or the comments by Brandon Carrol, whom I rag on but was surprisingly knowledgeable in this instance, you would know that the garages are being built so existing parking lots can be bulldozed for new buildings. We will gain no additional parking from these garages but will be paying much more. I personally am upset because Tech students will be paying 5 times what they are now for an already inadequate parking system. However the fact that this is happening means the assertion you based your article on is false. Much like our other commenter today 5 seconds of additional reading would have made you realize your opinion is based on false assertions. You not only wasted your time, you wasted our time and the CTs energy. I think you owe us an apology.
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The issue is not so much VT parking; rather it is the fact that everyone is obsessed with CONVENIENCE. For the most part, Virginia Tech students/faculty/staff live within a 2 mile radius from campus. HOWEVER, when they leave in the morning, they drive (along with their next door neighbors) in a Single-Occupancy Vehicle (SOV). What we NEED to do is increase the reliability and attractiveness of the alternative - in this case the Blacksburg Transit.
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What an out of touch elitist view I bet you have a car on campus. As someone that relies on the BT I can tell you it sucks balls. It's never on time, crowded and smells of BO. There is no problem with people driving, it's cold as hell 8 months a year I don't care how close you are to campus people need to drive. We need to expand parking on campus so more students will drive. We can sell more parking passes and use that money for other things like the BT.
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The assertions in this article are actually not true.
Vertical Parking reduces the surface area of parking,
reduces the runoff from the surface area, reduces the
heat radiation (solar radiation) that comes with surface
parking. Simply put, you take, for example a 20 acre
surface lot and condense it to a three acre vertical lot
and you've immediately removed 17 acres of blacktop
radiating heat into the surrounding area. Tech would do
well to eliminate 'The Cage' and 'The Squires Lot' by
replacing them with multi-use garages  multiuse also
allows you to build atop garages removing more surface
radiation as well. Building a garage historically has not
proven any increase in vehicle traffic...
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