As the newest UC completes its first decade, welcoming a staggering 6,600 students, many are looking forward to the continuous growth of this campus and what the future may hold. As a part of the University's 2020 project, UC Merced hopes to accommodate up to 10,000 students. While this may capture the attention of the masses in awe of what strides in research and engineering this campus will accomplish, it leaves current UC Merced students wondering:
When will they build more parking?!
According to the Los Angeles Times, the campus (as of July 22, 2015) only occupied 104 of the 840 acres it controls. Eight Hundred. And Forty Acres. And yet UC Merced Students are limited to parking in the nearly always full Lake Lots 1 & 2 or in the dust and gravel-filled Evolution Valley Lot.
(These 840 acres, of course, do not include the 6,500 acres of land that were set aside as a nature reserve in order to protect the vernal pools)
Obviously, this lack of parking has led to a great deal of student outrage. Students who commute to campus this semester tend to arrive half an hour to an hour earlier than their class and still can't find parking. "Five cars followed me to my park as I was leaving class. They were so...desperate, it was a little scary," one Freshman student remarked when asked about the parking situation.
Some students have taken it upon themselves to find a solution to the disaster created by an overpopulated campus with only 2.5 student parking lots.
Unfortunately, creating your own parks will most likely earn a hefty ticket or fine from the Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS). Students are upset, and rightly so. We pay nearly $300 for a parking permit and yet can't find a parking spot? And if we do, we may end up late to class. And I don't know about all professors, but I know that several of mine wouldn't excuse being late to a quiz or even late to a simple attendance roll call because there was no parking.
And while we may wish we could solve parking struggles like this:
We've been forced to simply deal with the first few weeks, compromise punctuality to find a park; take extra time and effort to take the bus and let our expensive parking permit sit idly buy as another expensive useless piece of collegiate papers we don't need (I'm looking at you Calculus textbook I never opened).
I feel as though my fellow Bobcats and myself have done all that we could. We spoke out, we complained (however our complaints may have been a bit misplaced).
As much as I'd like to blame TAPS for the lack of parking, they're in charge of permits and fines, tickets and traffic control; parking structure decisions and land usage of the campus is outside of their control.
But finally, after all of our complaints and woes, our prayers have been answered.
A new parking lot, Mountain View Lot, was just opened today! In this new parking lot, all parking permits are valid except for the Housing H Permits (sorry on campus students). This is good news! I know 50 spaces may not seem like much but its a start. In fact, its more than that; its proof that our voices are heard. Maybe further parking changes will be in the near future, but for now, lets be thankful for this small step in the right direction and hopefully get to class on time.
