December 20, 2002
TO THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY
Dear Colleagues:
The Special Advisory Committee on Parking forwarded to me its final report, which I have sent out to campus control points for consultation. The report has been posted under “News and Information” on the Parking and Transportation Services website: http://www.tps.ucsb.edu.
I have received much correspondence from students, faculty, staff, and the community regarding the recommendations of the report. As you know, I have already accepted the first set of nine recommendations that the committee submitted to me last June. The list of these is attached. The vast majority of the comments I have received regarding these first nine recommendations have concerned the implementation of night and weekend rates. Recognizing that night and weekend rates will have impacts on students, academic programs, intercollegiate athletics, arts and lectures, and the many visitors to our campus, the start of night and weekend rates will be deferred until 2003/04. This will provide the time needed for Parking Services to work closely with all of the affected units to mitigate, as much as possible, any transient negative impacts. I have asked Vice Chancellor George Pernsteiner to report on an implementation plan for night and weekend parking.
I have also received comments expressing concern about how the proposed Rate Payer and Alternative Transportation Boards would be constituted, how elections would be managed for the Rate Payer Board, and how these Boards would interact with other campus and Academic Senate planning committees. I have been advised to appoint an Interim Parking Advisory Committee to help with the establishment of these Boards and to oversee the implementation of the recommendations until these Boards come on line. I am pleased to report that the following colleagues and students have graciously agreed to serve on this Interim Committee:
Bruce Luyendyk, Chair (faculty, Council on Planning and Budget)
Douglas Morgan (faculty, member of the Special Advisory Committee on Parking)
Paula Bruice (faculty, Faculty Association)
Jacob Haik (student, President, Residence Halls Association)
Chrystine Lawson (student, President, Associated Students, CPC member)
Edward Collins (student, President, Graduate Students Association, CPC member)
Leslie Campbell (staff, Chair, Staff Assembly, CPC member)
Tacy Costanzo (staff, Co-Chair, Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee)
Donna Coyne (staff, Co-Chair, Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee)
The remaining recommendations are also attached, and the following actions will be taken on them:
1. I will take up the matter of revisiting UC policies on parking and transportation with the Office of the President and with fellow Chancellors.
2. I have asked Acting Associate Chancellor for Budget and Planning Todd Lee to:
a) implement the recommendations regarding the incorporation of parking and access into the Campus Master Plan, Long Range Development Plan, and into the capital project approval process; and
b) establish a biennial survey to determine faculty, staff, and student transportation needs, practices, and desires, and to integrate these data into a GIS-based data set for purposes of transportation planning.
3. I am deferring any decision to expand the membership of the Campus Planning Committee by adding the Chairs of the proposed Parking Rate Payer Boards and Alternative Transportation Boards. Instead, I am asking Acting Associate Chancellor Todd Lee and his staff to work with these Boards, once established, to coordinate planning for parking needs with overall campus capital and physical planning.
4. I have asked Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services George Pernsteiner to have Director of Transportation and Parking Services Tom Roberts:
a) begin planning an expanded interim surface lot in the vicinity of Lot 3;
b) implement the parking forecasting methods recommended by the committee;
c) continue his efforts at improving the cost efficiencies of Parking Services; and
d) implement the recommendations on Transportation Alternatives. I have already met with Gary Gleason, the Executive Director of MTD, and we have established an agenda for a series of working sessions organized by Vice Chancellor George Pernsteiner to work towards improved bus service for faculty, staff, and students at UCSB.
5. I have asked Human Resources Director Cynthia Cronk to work with Wendy Nishikawa, the Work-Life Director, to develop a program for increasing the use of flex time and telecommuting for our staff. I will take up the issue of class scheduling with the Academic Senate and the Registrar's Office.
6. I have asked Vice Chancellor Pernsteiner and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Young to implement the recommendations regarding residence hall student parking, with the exception that Parking Lot 2 shall remain B1 or residential student parking. In addition, I have asked them to monitor the ramifications of these actions on both residential student life and Isla Vista redevelopment.
I want to express my deep appreciation to Chair Gene Lucas and all the members of the Special Advisory Committee for their hard work in researching the parking and transportation issues, consulting broadly with the campus, and preparing their final report and thoughtful list of recommendations. Their effort has enabled our campus to move forward with a new parking structure in Lot 10 without an increase in annual permit rates. The membership of the Committee is given below.
Sincerely,
Henry T. Yang
Chancellor
Attachments
Chancellor’s Special Advisory Committee on Parking
Gene Lucas, Chair College of Engineering
Brian Hampton President, Associated Students (2001-02)
Chrystine Lawson President, Associated Students (2002-03)
Bruce Straits Chair, Faculty Welfare Committee
Bruce Tiffney Chair, Committee on Capital Projects
Diana Alvarado Co-Chair, Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee
Douglas Morgan Former Divisional Chair, Academic Senate
Tacy Costanzo Co-Chair, Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee
Hal Drake Academic Senate Faculty-at-Large Representative
Jacob Haik President, Residence Hall Association
John Doner Chair, Parking and Transportation Committee
Sandra Featherson Staff Representative, Parking and Transportation Committee
Shawn Landres President, Graduate Students Association (2001-02)
Mario Garcia Academic Senate Faculty-at-Large Representative
Parking Recommendations Accepted as of June 2002
1. The Parking & Transportation Committee should be discontinued, and separate Parking Ratepayer and Alternative Transportation boards should be established.
2. The monthly permit rate (A,S,C, and B1-B3) should remain at $35/month for the
academic 2002/03 year.
3. The daily rate should increase to $7/day for the academic 2002-03 year.
4. The differential rate for “Top-of-the-Mesa” parking should be discontinued.
5. A night and weekend parking permit program should be implemented as rapidly as possible during the 2002-03 academic year. We recommend consideration of an initial fee structure of $10/month or $2/night or weekend day. This would only apply to persons who do not already hold a monthly, quarterly or annual ASCB permit. After one year’s experience, the rate structure and impact of this permit program should be reviewed.
6. The campus should provide net new core funding to Parking Services, beginning at a level of $250,000 in academic year 2002/03.
7. The committee recommends that the campus proceed with the construction of a second parking structure on the east side of campus, with a budget of no more than $16 million.
8. If the University negotiates a lower rate for some purchasers of parking permits (for example, under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement), it should reimburse the parking program for the difference between the negotiated rate and the rate otherwise charged for the same category of permit.
9. The administration must immediately take a more proactive role in garnering improved service from MTD.
Additional Parking Recommendations in Final Report
1. The Chancellor should initiate a process with the University of California Office of the President and the Chancellors of all other UC campuses to revisit UC policies on parking and transportation.
2. The Campus Master Plan and the next Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) must explicitly integrate parking and access, including consideration of the distribution of cost impacts, into the planning process.
3. Every new capital project must have a parking and transportation plan that addresses parking replacement costs and proposes mitigations. The plan must be submitted to the Parking Ratepayer Board and the Alternative Transportation Board as part of the site selection and project budget process.
4. The campus should conduct a biennial survey of faculty, staff and students to determine their transportation needs, practices, and desires, and it should integrate these data into a GIS-based data set on an annual basis to allow proactive planning.
5. The Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) should be established as a financially independent operation, encouraged to becoming increasingly profitable as it decreases campus need for single-occupant vehicle use, measured as a demonstrable drop in the need for parking places. Steps should include the following:
a. As soon as the grant money is available, the TAP program should purchase in-vehicle parking meters and institute a program to offer these to the campus community in a way that encourages participation in the TAP program and that gives some preference to part time employees.
b. The administration should make it a priority to implement and support a set of “Scheduling Initiatives” including the consideration of alternative scheduling of classes to spread demand over a longer period of each day and over more days of the week; implementing staff flex-time to spread demand over a longer period of each day; and greater usage of "telecommuting."
6. Parking Services should be streamlined and run on the basis of cost containment.
7. The Chancellor should immediately set in place policies to discourage students from bringing cars to UCSB, and to continue a program of restricting on-campus residence hall automobile storage, with a target of no more than 500 spaces occupied by residence hall student automobiles by 2003-04.
8. Residence hall parking in the core lots (currently B1 and B2) should be limited to Resident Assistants and students with special needs for automobile access. All other resident student parking should be restricted to the peripheral lots (currently B3 and B4).
9. The loss of approximately 200 spaces in Lot 23 due to construction of the Student Resources Building (SRB) should be mitigated by the following two actions:
a. Use the $400k of parking mitigation funds from the SRB budget to construct at least 100 surface spaces near Lot 3.
b. Convert 50 B1 permits to AS in Lot 2 and reduce the inventory of B2 permits in Lot 23 by 50.