In response to this week’s Poly article, “Parking has no better solutions,” I too have seen many complaints about parking. After being here for four years, I believe this year’s plan is the best system RPI has come up with yet, given the conditions. But I think the RPI administration is to blame for the parking situation. In an April Fools issue of The Poly that appeared something like ten years ago, a parking garage plan was on the front cover as a joke. Ten years later, that article serves as a pathetic reminder that parking has been a major concern for a very, very long time. Too long, actually.

The only thing I can think of that would allow this issue to remain so major for so long is the fact that the parking department receives a large amount of their budget from parking tickets. What incentive was there to build a parking garage? And when the new parking garage is open, there will be far less tickets to write, but still many bills to pay. I wonder what the parking fees in the new garage are going to be in order to make up for this deficit? The fact that people are still griping about parking is too bad. The complainers obviously haven’t learned that this campus doesn’t really care about where you park—as long as you pay your tuition fees.

If RPI really wanted to make parking more convenient and affordable for commuters, I’d recommend making the garage available primarily for staff parking and the rest of campus becoming a free-for-all, no permit, first-come, first-serve parking area, just like any street in Troy. And please, enough with the fees. If you can’t build an $80 parking fee into a $30,000 tuition fee, then you shouldn’t be running a management school.

Darren Schreiber