! !!!Date: August 4, 2014 To: Lee Sonnenberg From: Jakob Kizewski, Austin Mounts, Paul Rogers, Christina Moore Subject: Proposal for improving TTU parking system !Enclosed you will find our final proposal for the improvement of Texas Tech University’s parking system. Our team has researched and designed better strategies for accommodating students’ parking needs, and we are pleased to give you a proposal of our ideas and recommendations. !Our proposal details the different aspects of the TTU parking system that are currently lacking, and how they can be improved to benefit students within this organization. Our plan includes several alternatives for issues that need the most immediate attention. We feel that if Texas Tech applies some of the suggested changes, and therefore improves their parking system, students will have ample parking options and will experience a more convenient way to attend classes and other on-campus events. !We ask you to please look over this proposal and let us know your opinion when it is most convenient for you. !!!!!!!!

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A proposal to improve TTU parking system and making it

more user friendly.

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Table of Contents !!SUBJECT PAGE

!Background 4 !Current State of Affairs 5 !Proposed Plan 7 !Cost and Benefits of Implementation 8 !Team’s Qualifications 9 !Conclusion 11

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! !!Background !As Technical Writing students, we were assigned a group proposal project. As a result of personal experiences, we felt it relevant to propose a plan to improve parking services at Texas Tech University. This is an issue that we can use to better our technical writing skills, while hopefully providing the information necessary to improve parking experience for students, faculty, and visitors. !On-campus parking is an issue that affects both staff and students at Texas Tech University. Any faculty or student that commutes must purchase commuter-parking permits, pay to park by the hour, or find some type of alternate transportation. For example, a Commuter permit allows faculty and students to park in one of seven lots. However, these lots are a long walking distance away from campus and sometimes reserved for special events that require a place for visitors to park, which in turn makes it even harder for students to find parking. !University Parking Services is responsible for all aspects of transportation across campus, as well as all the parking. As a self-sustaining department, the more tickets they issue, the more revenue they take in, says The Lubbock Avalanche Journal. Unfortunately, in recent years the number of students attending Texas Tech has increased significantly, but the amount of on-campus parking has remained the same. If Texas Tech wishes to accommodate more and more students every year, it is necessary that more parking lots be built. This way, parking would be available for all commuters. !In this proposal, we offer University Parking Services a few options to improve their parking system in order to accommodate current and future Red Raiders. We recommend the implementation of a new parking pass and diminish parking penalties, along with the way these penalties are issued. !We will begin our proposal by detailing the current state of affairs of on-campus parking. Then, we will outline a plan by which the University Parking Services can improve its parking system. Following, we will provide a list of each team member’s qualifications

for assisting in this proposal project. Finally, we will go over the potential benefits our proposed plan can accomplish.

! !Current State of Affairs !Currently, students are only allowed to park on-campus if they have purchased a parking permit. These permits allow students to park only in certain designated areas, which are inconveniently located far from any academic building. The buses, which are meant to take students from the parking lot to the heart of campus, are always late and rides take up to thirty minutes. !

! !Although far, the permits remain expensive and availability is limited. With all the other financial responsibilities placed on college students, a parking ticket or a parking permit may come as an inconvenient expense. The following table lists current pricing for all on-campus lots: ! Student Passes Park & Pay !

Parking Space Months

Cost

!After buying a pass, students are still not guaranteed a spot in their lot of choice. Due to overcrowding, especially on days of special events, student lots are taken up to allow for visitors to park. From personal experience, we know that it takes 10-20 minutes to find appropriate parking, only to have to walk an additional ten minutes to class or other on-campus activities. If caught parked in an illegal spot, students are fined from a minimum of $25 to a maximum of $200 as shown by the table below. !!!!

Residence Hall 9 $244.00

Flint Ave Garage 9 $639.00

Raider Park Garage 9 $132.00

Commuter North 9 $150.00

Commuter West 9 $132.00

Commuter Satellite 9 $40.00

Motorcycle 9 $80.00

Summer Surface 3 $81.00

Summer Garage 3 $213.00

Parking Space Period Cost

Surface Hourly $1.50

Surface Daily $9.00

Garage Hourly $1.50

Garage Daily $9.00

No Parking Violation Fee

1 Parking in non-designated areas. ** $25.00

2 Decal not properly installed / License plate not visible. $10.00

!!In recent years, University Parking Services started implementing electronic tickets, which are notifications sent to student email account informing of a parking violation. This system, although paper friendly, can be very ineffective. Often, emails are received several days’ late, and occasionally even months after the violation. Other times, no emails are received at all. A junior at Texas Tech, Brittain Gentry, has received five electronic parking citations that arrived six months after the citation date. This is often caused when emails get sent straight to the spam mail folder. Without an email notification, students have no way of a citation was issued, therefore due dates are easily missed and late fees are automatically applied. These are the consequences for relying solely on email notifications. Furthermore, University Parking Services’ policy states that once a vehicle has been ticketed a total of seven times in the same semester, the vehicle will be booted and the owner will be charged an additional fee to remove it. !

3 Parking in a fire lane. ** $50.00

4 Failure to removed expired decal(s). $20.00

5 Parking in a no parking or or tow away zone. ** $25.00

6 Parking in service vehicle spaces, service drives, or access drives. ** $20.00

7 Unauthorized parking in reserved parking spaces. ** $50.00

8 Obstructing traffic, street, sidewalk, crosswalk, driveway, trash container, building entrance or exit. **

$25.00

9 Parking overtime in a time limit zone. ** $20.00

10 Parking a bicycle in violation of these regulations. ** $10.00

11 Parking a motor vehicle beyond the lines of a parking space. ** $20.00

13 Parking on wrong side of street facing oncoming traffic. $20.00

14 Parking without a valid permission. ** $25.00

15 Parking a motor vehicle upon any unmarked (including turf) or unimproved ground, which has not been designated for parking. **

$75.00

16 Parking in a space or area designated for persons with disabilities without the proper insignia.**

$200.00

17 Blocking an access ramp or curb cut designed to aid persons with disabilities. $200.00

18 Display or use of a lost, stolen, forged, revoked, or altered decal or license plate. ** Such violation may result in the responsible party/parties being referred to the appropriate office for disciplinary action, which may include loss of parking privileges for the remainder of the academic year.

Up to $200.00

19 Other parking violations as defined on the face of the citation. ** $20.00

20 Failure to update license plate/transfer permission(s). $10.00

Every student gets one free ticket dismissal; this dismissal can only be used once for the duration of the student’s college career at Texas Tech. For most students, this free dismissal is used within the first semester, leaving the rest of the tickets they accumulate throughout the years up to the Board of Appeals for dismissal.

! !!Proposed Plan !In order to improve University Parking Services, we have proposed a plan that consists of several steps. These steps could help improve parking services to current and future Red Raiders. The primary objective of this proposal is to create affordable and convenient parking for all students. University Parking Services should allow more affordable and more convenient parking prices and locations. Tickets should not be sent solely by email, and consequences for violations should be diminished. By doing so we propose that TTU parking services create new signs and methods to clearly state which areas are available for current parking passes. These three major concerns will be listed as steps one, two, three, and four. Step One: Parking Pass Included in Tuition Add a parking pass to every student’s tuition. Price of pass would be included in tuition along with all the other school fees. No extra charges would be needed to use any of the parking lots. Step Two: Build More Convenient Parking As stated earlier, most students usually spend an average of 10-20 minutes solely looking for parking, and another 10-15 in order to walk to class. We propose that more convenient parking be available to students on campus. These areas would mimic the structure of the existing faculty parking, thus increasing the amount of parking without taking up a lot of space. Step Three: Improve Method of Ticket Issuing and Signs Up until the school semester of 2012-2013, notifications of ticket violations were placed on the windshield of cars by hand. Recently, the method has changed to electronic notifications; the tickets are sent via email. Issues arise when relying solely on this method. We propose to use both methods, thus making sure every violator receives proper notification of the violation. Furthermore, current parking signs on campus should

be replaced by simple, easy to understand signs that illustrate clearly the permits required to park legally. Step four: Multi-lot Parking !The parking pass included in every student’s tuition will be a multi-lot parking pass, which means students and faculty would have the liberty to park at any on-campus lot. This step would provide every pass-holder with a convenient place to park near all academic buildings.

! !!Cost and Benefits of Implementation !!The investments made in creating a more user friendly parking system will pay-off in the long run, after money has been raised by the increase of tuition and new students are attracted by the friendly parking policies. If each student added an extra two dollars to their tuition for parking, around 31,000 to 33,000 students, an extra $66K would be raised to build more parking spaces. This would benefit each college student and especially those who prefer to park close to their classes throughout the day. If this proposal is chosen, the benefits will be the following: more convenient parking for students and faculty, friendly parking policies, and a less stressful way to get to class. !The cost of implementing this plan does not outdo the benefits. Such costs are: allocated jobs, and a small increase in tuition. There would be no need for the amount of ‘ticket givers’; therefore, these jobs would be allocated to support the new parking system. If parking is included in tuition, then it would also help students who aren’t currently able to add the cost of a permit into their tuition for reasons such as scholarships and grants. Since so many fees are already included in our tuition, we recommend the parking fee to be included as well. Why would the Tech Rec center be included in our tuition if students are not allowed to use its parking lot? !The benefits of this proposal are enormous for both students and faculty. With this proposal any family members visiting the campus will have easy access to parking in and around the campus. This will also help athletes and the band department, who currently do not get free parking; football is the only sport that offers its players free parking. With this proposal, all student athletes and band members would be given the same parking privileges that are currently only given to one athletic department. With parking included in tuition, commuters would be able to drive to class and park near their academic building. Although there will be no need for as many ‘ticket issuers’, if all students are required to pay a parking fee in their initial tuition, revenue for this department would most likely increase and there would be less congestion in the nearby neighborhoods. Nowadays, these neighborhoods, like Tech Terrace, are flooded with commuters trying to find a spot to park throughout the duration of their classes and on-campus activities. With

more parking around campus, students will also no longer have such far distances to walk from the parking lot, to class, and back again. This could ultimately lead to an increase in enrollment and satisfaction around the Texas Tech campus, where students will not have as many parking tickets and discrepancies with Texas Tech Parking. Upcoming freshman and students touring the campus for the first time would have much easier access to parking during their campus tours. !

! !!Team’s Qualifications !Our group is made up of diverse and highly skilled individuals. Each come from different backgrounds, have different contributions, and have a variety of different majors and minors. All members’ personal experiences will contribute to finding alternative solutions to parking services at Texas Tech University. !Amongst the four of us, we have 10 years of parking experience at Texas Tech. Throughout the time spent here, we have seen the school grow immensely. However, with such growth the expansion of parking spaces is mandatory. Paul Rogers, who worked for Morrow Water Savers, claims throughout his experience with making parking more simplistic at his work place, customers had become more satisfied. Two of our members are ESS majors, as such they have noticed that with the current parking situation because of the long walks to class and heavy backpacks students carry, a lot of stress is placed on their backs. The stress can possibly cause long term back pain from repetitive abuse. Jakob Kizewski, a Psychology major at Texas Tech, claims the current malicious state of affairs between TTU parking and its students is affecting the student body’s image and trust of the school as a whole. As well as making it less likely for students to attend class because parking it so stressful and time consuming. !!

! !!Conclusion !It is necessary for University Parking Services to provide more convenient parking to its students, faculty, and visitors. In order to achieve this goal, we propose that University Parking Services, along with Texas Tech University implement our plan to build more convenient parking lots, and change some aspects of its services. The cost for implementation would be small since money is being raised for the actual construction of the parking lots. The cost for the parking passing would be included in the tuition, much like all the other fees. !The steps we have proposed are to include multi-lot pass in tuition, building convenient parking lots, and use two methods of citation notification. This plan will benefit the students in many ways and will expand the admiration for Texas Tech University and University Parking Services. ! Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. If there are any concerns or comments please do not hesitate to contact our group with any questions.

! !!References !http://lubbockonline.com/stories/082904/loc_082904054.shtml http://www.parking.ttu.edu !