Parking fees go up

UTRGV has hiked fees for two parking zones and established one for housing students who park their cars on campus.

Parking and Transportation Services increased fees for Preferred Zones 2 and 3, and set one for Resident.

Future increases for Zone 2 are already planned.

Rodney Gomez, executive director of Parking and Transportation Services, said they are in the second year of a three-year plan for Zone 2.

“We presented the plan to the Parking and Traffic Advisory Committee and they approved the plan,” Gomez said. “For Zone 2, we are going to increase it by $20 over three years. This is the second year, so it’s now up to $100 and next year it will go up to $120 and that’s as far as we’ve planned.”

   The revenue that is going to be collected from these new fees will be used for more parking spaces on both campuses.

“Hopefully, this fall we are going to get started with a study and [it] will allow us to project into the future. … It’ll give us an idea of when we will need something like a parking garage and what it will cost and how we can go about funding it,” Gomez said.

During the last academic year, around 200 parking spaces were added on the Brownsville campus, and last summer, 200 spaces were added to the Edinburg campus, according to Gomez.

The newly created Resident Zone fee is $100; Zone 2, $80 to $100; Zone 3, $156 to $200.

Zone 1 remains at $60 and there is no plan to increase the fee in the future.

“We plan to remain constant, especially … with those [Texas Southmost College in Brownsville] parking spaces that we share and we wouldn’t want to have any other price that they don’t,” said Pablo Aguilar, director of Parking Services.

Freshmen are now allowed to purchase a parking permit either in Zones 1 or 2. Previously, they were allowed access only to Zone 1.

“We wanted to give students more options [and] we didn’t see that there is really a good reason to disallow freshmen from parking just in specific spaces,” Gomez said. “Everybody should have the opportunity to park either in Zone 1 or Zone 2.”

 Gomez and Aguilar said they have been receiving good feedback from students and staff about the new parking fees.

However, not everyone is happy with the new fees.

“I’m actually pretty annoyed [with the new fees]. … I’ll probably just have to add it to my credit card, which already has quite a bit of debt,” said Jose Sias, a mass communication senior. “It’s annoying, but I have to do it.”

Sias also said it is hard to find a parking spot, especially in Zone 2.

“I’m from Brownsville and I have to take the bus, so I have to get there early,” Sias said. “One time I had to drive all the way to Edinburg, because I missed the bus, [and] I couldn’t find a parking spot.”

To avoid some parking issues, students are encouraged to use remote parking zones and then use the campus shuttle to get to class. On the Edinburg campus, students can park in Lots E34 and E33, and on the Brownsville campus, Lot B4 and TSC lots are open as well.

“Use the remote lots and to plan ahead. … There is enough parking in the remote lots,” Gomez said. “You have to make that trade-off, ‘Am I going to going to pay a citation or am I going to plan a little bit ahead?’”

Students are also encouraged to not park off campus in restaurants or other businesses.

“We are trying to minimize that. We are adding more parking … and keeping the remote lots at a low cost to increase participation. … We really want people to be safer,” Aguilar said.