Parking Services is preparing for the new parking system that will go into effect next semester. The system will include a limited amount of gated parking for faculty and staff and a new zoning system for commuters. Another change involves redesigning the parking decal, which has been relatively the same for years.
“There’s a lot going on,” Support Services director Paul Welch said. “We’ve recently purchased T2 PowerPark Flex, a new software system that will help make parking services more efficient. We are anticipating selling decals and setting up gated parking, too.”
Parking Services recently confirmed the construction of gated parking lots on both sides of Allen Hall.
“I’ve been requested to gate the east and west sides of Allen Hall by April 15,” Welch said. “There will be roughly 200 parking spaces available in the lots, which will be sold at a rate of $10 a month to those faculty and staff wanting to participate.”
Welch said he thinks the gated parking lots are an advantage to faculty and staff.
“It’s a good deal, especially for folks who work in that area,” he said.
Welch said during the rest of the semester and the summer terms, the gated parking will be free. However, billing for gated parking will start Aug. 1. Another change in decals will be the price. Decal prices are going to rise from $25 to $50 next semester.
Faculty and staff aren’t the only motorists who will see a change in parking. Commuter students will be zoned in specific areas starting next semester.
“With zones, the hope is that people will learn a route to get to their parking area,” MSU Police Sgt. Vic Nickels said. “It will really help get rid of traffic.”
“Commuters will be zoned into a particular parking area, either in the east [McComas Hall area], west [tennis court area], northeast [Herbert Hall area] or coliseum zones,” Welch said.
Welch said the most popular areas will be the east and west lots.
“The McComas area will sell in the area of 2,600 decals, and decals for the west side are going to be around 1,000,” he said
Parking Services will try to make the options for parking available to upperclassmen first.
“We will have a limited number of spaces that will be sold for each area,” Welch said. “We are trying to make it available to grad students and seniors to purchase their decals first.”
Welch said he was unsure if this policy would go into effect, but it is likely.
“We don’t have the plans handed out at this time, but that is our goal,” he said.
Commuter freshmen will not have the luxury of choice. All incoming freshmen will be required to park in the Humphrey Coliseum lot.
“There are roughly 400 commuter freshmen that will be assigned spaces in the coliseum lot,” Welch said. “The rest will be for students who register after all the other zones fill up.”
Students such as those who attend class at the College of Veterinary Medicine or live in on-campus apartments will have special decals made available to them.
“We’re making decals for students in the vet school, residents of Aiken Village and students attending night classes,” Welch said.
The decals themselves will even look different. They will be larger and will feature color coding for zone identification.
According to Nickels, besides helping identify vehicles more efficiently, the new decal will be bigger and more visible in order to promote the university when students are off campus.
The new format of the decal is accredited to Seth Robbins, a junior political science major and newly elected Student Association attorney general.
“Seth came by and ran some ideas by us; at the same time, we were trying to come up with ways to make the system better,” Welch said.
Welch said their meeting was like clockwork.
“Basically, I just came to [Welch] and made a few suggestions,” Robbins said. “The department was very receptive.”
Robbins said he got the idea to make the decal bigger after seeing other universities’ decals.
“I would see other schools’ decals and I would know what they were even though I didn’t go there,” Robbins said. “That’s a lot of publicity for those schools. You can’t really see what our decal is unless you are really close to it or already know what it is.”
Robbins said he believes new decals will be an excellent marketing tool.
“There are 16,000 students here-75 percent of them are from Mississippi-so when they are riding around in Mississippi towns, they will be putting an image into people’s minds,” he said. “The out-of-staters will be doing it as well, driving through Memphis, Atlanta and Birmingham. People see the sticker and say, ‘Hey, Sylvester Croom coaches there,’ or ‘Lawrence Roberts played there,’ and that helps the university.”
Though the changes will be sudden, Welch and Nickels said they are confident in the new system.
“We’ve been talking about zoned parking with members of the SA and we’ve not received negative feedback,” Welch said.
“As with any change, I believe it’ll be rough at first, but when motorists understand what our goal is, to be pedestrian friendly, it will be better and safer for people on campus,” Nickels said.