7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Opportunity:

The University of Florida is a massive campus that spans multiple square miles. Students often have to walk over a mile to get from class to class but have to do so in a 15-minute period. This is due to the fact that driving on campus to get from class to class is nearly impossible due to the lack of parking on campus. The parking on campus is insufficient and negatively effects the students at UF.

·      The Who: Students, staff, and visitors with a parking pass at The University of Florida

·      The What: Students, staff, and visitors are not able to find parking spots on campus which is directly negatively affecting anyone who has a car on campus. This leads to students and professors being late to class. The parking situation at UF is extremely flawed.

·      The Why: The University of Florida gives out more parking spots to people than there actually are spaces available. In addition, there are only large parking areas on the outskirts of campus, such as on Fraternity Drive. There is extremely limited parking in central campus and with the little spots there are, they are limited to people with parking passes that you most likely need to be a senior to have.

Testing the who:

Generally speaking, this only affects people at UF who have a parking spot. I guess you can also sort of go beyond that though. Other people who could carpool with people with parking passes would be positively affected if parking was better on campus. However, residents/business owners of surrounding campus could be negatively affected if we begin to build more parking off campus as this would possible result in knocking down current structures for new parking garages.

Testing the what:

To test the what, I will try to find out if all UF parking pass holders feel affected by the limited parking on campus. In addition, I will try to find how big of a deal it is to them; is it worth trying to fix or is it just a minor inconvenience?

Testing the why:

Is it the universities fault or is it the county governments fault? Is it due to the fact that there is less spots than passes sold or is it due to the fact that there is no central parking on campus which makes parking a pain as you need to walk nearly off campus to find a spot?

Interview 1 Main Takeaways:

-       “Impossible to find spot in central campus”

-       Easy to find spot on Fraternity Drive, occasionally can find spot in Keys Complex.

-       Having a car makes life easier still because of the ability to go places off campus such as running errands.

-       No way to get onto campus with a car, very inconvenient.

Interview 2 Main Takeaways:

-       Having a car doesn’t help with on campus getting around.

-       He has gotten multiple parking tickets (8 tickets) because only place to park is not allowed on their parking pass. This is insane. Essentially forcing students to getting parking tickets. Extremely flawed system.

-       Too expensive to produce underground garages. Instead should make fatter parking garages such as the Broward garage.

Interview 3 Main Takeaways:

-       Can’t go deep underground because soil/rock. This kind of defeats my entire plan L

-       Get rid of orange lots on campus since no one can park in them.

-       Sewer system underground (can be moved).

-       Fraternity spot only spot guaranteed (and park and ride, but inconvenient).

Interview 4 Main Takeaways:

-       Dorm specific decals.

-       Making parking passes more expensive so less people buy them.

-       Need better bus system on campus so that less people need to have cars. Will solve the issue.

-       Needs to have a better system for appealing tickets (4).

Interview 5 Main Takeaways:

-       When Weekend parking is lifted, off campus people take up all the spots on campus.

-       Never spots on game days.

-       Sell less passes than spots so we are guaranteed a spot.

-       If made bus system better, we wouldn’t need cars as badly!

Write-Up:

After conducting the five interviews, I learned a lot more about the who, what, and why of the issue of on campus parking at The University of Florida. Nearly everyone is affected by this situation, whether or not you have a car. I interviewed four people with cars and one without a car and all seemed just as passionate about the issue. With that being said, since everyone was so passionate about the issue, I confirmed it really is a problem on campus. I do have a large concern to my solution however, which was brought up during an interview. My solution of building underground parking garages, might be an issue as in Florida, it is difficult t build underground because of the rock type. Coming from Maryland, I am not used to this which is why I didn’t think about that. If it isn’t too below ground however it might be possible. In addition, I found from these interviews that if we had a better bus system, the issue of parking on campus might be fixed/resolved.