Students respond to UA parking woes
Matt Watson
Issue date: 10/15/08 Section: News
UA students are getting creative to avoid paying the high prices of parking permits and violations.
One student, a Transit and Parking Department employee who wished not to be identified by name, said there is a schedule of which lot patrollers go where and when.
The employee said the "ticket Nazis" that know him know his car and won't write him a ticket. "I'm pretty safe," he said.
The TPD employee also said the university can't put a boot on cars with big rims, because students can sue the university for scratching the rims, some of which cost thousands of dollars. The cars will be towed instead, but he said if students catch the lot patrollers waiting at their cars for a boot or tow to come, they can leave their spots and avoid the extra fee. He also said he's seen students remove boots by kicking them off and by deflating and re-inflating their tires.
TPD program adviser Andy Gilbride said he has heard all the stories himself.
Some students keep old tickets or take them off other cars in the same lot and put them on their windshields when they park illegally so lot patrollers will think they've already ticketed them.
"Patrollers are in a specific area for a certain amount of time, so they know if they've written the tickets or not. It may work sometimes, but most often not," he said.
After the Harmon Avenue Parking Garage was built in 2005, there was a rash of fake permits in the deck. Gilbride said there were 30 fakes in 2006, but since then the penalties were increased, so no one tries it anymore.
"We caught a lot of them because they would tell their friends and make somebody mad, because their friends paid $400 or $500 for a permit and [would] call us and tell us," he said.
Rather than pay the $592 fee to park year-round in the deck that is actually closer to Fayetteville High School than Old Main, some students park at Harmon and simply wait for the gates to open to exit, on weekends or between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. weekdays, so that they don't ever have to pay.
One student, a Transit and Parking Department employee who wished not to be identified by name, said there is a schedule of which lot patrollers go where and when.
The employee said the "ticket Nazis" that know him know his car and won't write him a ticket. "I'm pretty safe," he said.
The TPD employee also said the university can't put a boot on cars with big rims, because students can sue the university for scratching the rims, some of which cost thousands of dollars. The cars will be towed instead, but he said if students catch the lot patrollers waiting at their cars for a boot or tow to come, they can leave their spots and avoid the extra fee. He also said he's seen students remove boots by kicking them off and by deflating and re-inflating their tires.
TPD program adviser Andy Gilbride said he has heard all the stories himself.
Some students keep old tickets or take them off other cars in the same lot and put them on their windshields when they park illegally so lot patrollers will think they've already ticketed them.
"Patrollers are in a specific area for a certain amount of time, so they know if they've written the tickets or not. It may work sometimes, but most often not," he said.
After the Harmon Avenue Parking Garage was built in 2005, there was a rash of fake permits in the deck. Gilbride said there were 30 fakes in 2006, but since then the penalties were increased, so no one tries it anymore.
"We caught a lot of them because they would tell their friends and make somebody mad, because their friends paid $400 or $500 for a permit and [would] call us and tell us," he said.
Rather than pay the $592 fee to park year-round in the deck that is actually closer to Fayetteville High School than Old Main, some students park at Harmon and simply wait for the gates to open to exit, on weekends or between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. weekdays, so that they don't ever have to pay.
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