With the start of the fall semester at Western University, a black market for parking permits had grown throughout student Facebook groups. A week before school began, the university announced the sell-out of parking permits, making it the fourth consecutive year that several students were left without a parking spot on campus.
Image from CBC.ca
The demand for parking permits has left students to find alternative solutions. One of those being, students bidding to buy a parking pass at a profit ranging from $50-$200. Considering that parking permits are non-transferable and a fine could be charged if students are caught using permits that are not assigned to them, some students have made contract deals to rent out parking spots at student housing around Western’s campus on streets such as Regent and Coombs.
Paige Palmer, a second-year MIT student at King’s College who lives in St. Thomas uses her car as the primary mode of transportation to commute to and from school. “I might drive 45 mins to Western and realize I don’t have a spot to park on. The city has cut off parking in and around campus and if I consider street parking, I might have to leave class halfway just so I don’t get a parking ticket which is extremely pricey.” Depending on the area within Western, parking tickets are charged between $30-$80. “Not having sufficient parking on campus is just an added stress on top of academic and social stressed that students already have”, says the King’s student.
To mitigate the issue at hand, Palmer has been looking to rent out a parking spot on student housing near King’s, while offering to bake cookies along with rent.
Parking Manager at Western, Mark Emerick says, “It’s a case of population vs. geography. We have grown to a size of about on campus, and with added people comes additional buildings. Parking lots have been cut down to about …..”. Another concern that might come with expanding parking is the traffic coming into Western which may cause more congestion on campus. “We are always investigating on expanding parking however several factors come into play when looking at that, as the river flows through the campus, expansion of current parking lots are not possible because of being extremely close to flooding planes,” says Emerick.
As of September 1st, LTC released new bus routes among which two express routes, #93 and #94 go through Western’s campus and the #27 which goes through Western to Fanshawe campus. With these changes, Western is hoping to become a more pedestrian-friendly campus.
