Growth and Parking - Finding the Perfect Balance
March 3, 2021
by Mike Harris, MBA, CAPP, CPP, Director of Parking and Transportation Services at Louisiana State University
LSU is very fortunate to continue to experience enrollment growth on its campus during these unprecedented times. For the third-straight year, LSU has broken the record for the largest and most diverse freshman class in university history. This year’s 6,690 freshmen enrolled surpasses last year’s record of 6,126 freshmen, and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, overall enrollment at LSU is at an all-time high of 34,290. The university now requires freshman to live on campus, as studies show this leads to improved academic performance.
The university has undertaken several new construction projects over the past few years, with two new residential halls scheduled to open in Fall 2021. These new residential life facilities will increase the number of beds by 900 at a time when we are already to identify an adequate amount of residential parking in close proximity to the buildings. In facing this situation, we had to evaluate and develop a solution to accommodate these new parkers.
We received many suggestions, ranging from construction of new parking garages to prohibiting freshmen from bringing their vehicles to campus. We quickly realized that constructing new parking garages is cost prohibitive. Requiring freshman to live on campus, but not allowing them to have their cars, creates a strain on existing campus transportation options and limits the students’ ability to work and shop off campus and travel home.
The university is in a very vehicle centric area of the city where having a vehicle is seen as almost as important as having a cell phone. In terms of student recruitment, LSU did not want to add any restrictions that might cause prospective students to choose another university to attend. Learning that a university will not allow you to bring your vehicle to campus as a freshman might lead an undecided freshman to choose a comparable school that does not have that restriction. If LSU decided that freshmen could not bring their vehicles on campus, the university would be required to upgrade existing transportation options and add new ones to ensure that students can get to, from and across campus, to airports in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and to other destinations. We continued to investigate various options to accommodate these new parkers and discovered that the answer was right in front of us.
LSU is fortunate to have a large area of parking that was not being fully utilized due to its location and a false perception that the lot is inconvenient to use. After reviewing the parking lot, we realized we could create a mobility hub there and create an express connector bus route to and from the center of campus that removed the convenience issue. This remote parking option, named Park and Geaux, would allow us to provide the additional residential parking needed, reallocate some parking areas on campus, and make use of a historically underutilized parking lot.
Design and financing for Park and Geaux has been completed and construction is slated to begin this month on what will truly be the first mobility hub on campus that provides an express bus service running every 7-10 minutes with connections to get students, faculty, staff and visitors to the Student Union located in the core of campus. Park and Geaux will be the least expensive parking permit option and will also have drop-off and pick-up service spaces that will accommodate Uber, Lyft, and other personal transportation options, such as bike share.
This decision opens up 4000 underutilized parking spaces and makes the lot a convenient and economical choice for the campus community. It will also allow us to keep the parking ratio of spaces to parkers at a respectable percentage, remove unsafe street parking spaces, prioritize other parking lots in the campus core and construct new buildings in adherence to the strategic and comprehensive campus master plan.
If I could communicate to my parking colleagues one thing that stood out to me during this process, it is the importance of planning. Make sure that the main players are in the room when discussions take place. When faced with a challenging parking situation, nothing is off the table during this step. Take the time to examine all options. Ensure that you not only look at what is currently needed, but also what the parking needs may be in the upcoming decades.
New buildings, whether they are classroom, administrative, residential, or auxiliary, will be added to your campus, and parking will be impacted in some way by these construction decisions. The best long-term decisions address enrollment growth, new construction of buildings, and increased core green spaces. The right decisions will make your campus attractive and inviting to new students and will also complete the circle of life for more campus growth. It is al
