Campus News

The Parking Situation on Campus By Rob Coffin

If you drive a car to UPEI, then you know that most days you would do just as well to park at K-Mart as on campus. The UPEI Security Department is doing its best to regulate this problem.

It is the duty of our 9 member Security force to watch out for the life and safety of each student at UPEI An integral part of Security’s job is to keep vehicle traffic moving efficiently. With an ever increasing student population, this is becoming more difficult.

For students’ information UPEI is the only Atlantic Canadian university that offers free parking. Other universities charge for parking by way of meters, selling spaces, or by paying a per-semester fee and receivit:p a registration card for parking. Students are fc:tunate in one sense that we can park our cars and pay nothing. With other educational costs increasing, students get the benefits of maintained parking lots with good lighting and efficient snow removal. So even if you must park down by the rugby field, consider

yourself somewhat lucky. Parking does cost money at other universities.

A.J. MacLeod, Head of UPEI Security, figures that if parking spaces here were sold, then we would have enough. Don’t panic, however, because this isn’t about to happen. Charging for parking, however, could possibly alleviate the problem by encouraging students and others to travel together to the university. Where possible, students are asked and encouraged to share a car rather than travel alone.

New parking lots are unlikely to be constructed in the near future at UPEI. For now, Security is doing its best. But they still must enforce the parking regulations of the University. The upshot of this is that illegal parking is unlikely to be tolerated and that tow trucks have pagers. Not a threat at all, but it is Security’s duty to run, for safety’s sake, an efficient parking system at UPEI.

That’s all for now. More next week on the UPEI Security Department.

September 20th, 1990

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