Practical Proposal Draft (revised)

On the fourth week of school, I came to the UH at 1 p.m., the parking lots were all full so I was forced to camp out for a parking spot for about an hour. During that time, not only did two students steal the parking spot that was rightfully mine, but I almost got into an accident over something stupid like a parking spot. By the time I found a parking spot, not only did I have to walk far to get to class, but I was already late, which made me decide to skip and go to the library to study. My mind was so frustrated at that time that even when I got to the library, I couldn't even study because my mind was still on the parking situation.

Due to the overselling of parking permits, students are not always guaranteed a parking spot. Fidel Ramirez, assistant director for Parking and Transportation Services, said 25,590 parking permits were sold this year, but only 12,702 total parking spots are available to students on the immediate campus, including both garage and satellite parking. More than 35,000 students attend the University of Houston and if there are only 12,702 parking spots available on the immediate campus, this would mean that more than 3/4ths of the students are forced to park off campus and be forced to wait for a shuttle bus.

For over many years, students have been struggling with the parking issue at the University of Houston. With the inconvenience of limited parking spaces, students are forced to find different solutions to obtain a parking spot. Many students are forced to leave their homes early in order to try and prevent the consequences of coming “late” for parking. Parking should not be a problem because students have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for parking permits, which doesn’t guarantee them a parking spot when arriving at school. The issue with parking makes students do unnecessary actions; these actions vary from parking in the parking meter, faculty and staff parking lot, or wasting time by camping out for an available parking slot. The University of Houston should improve parking because students have inadequate parking on campus.

There are many different parking lots at UH which are all reserved for certain people with certain permits. These numerous amounts of parking lots are spread out throughout the entire campus; many of which are out of the way for students to park and walk to their designated location. The sign at the entrance states who can park at that certain parking lot, but if you somehow manage to enter that parking lot through a different route, other than the main entrance, the student would not know that they are in a parking lot that they are not suppose to be in. This would become a problem for the student because he/she did not know that she will receive a citation for not being in the correct parking lot that he/she was assigned to. The parking lot signs are unclear and do not tell the driver of the vehicle who that parking lot is reserved for, which is an inconvenience for the students at UH.

The parking lots usually get filled between eight to nine o’clock a.m. A student arriving to school after that time will be forced to drive around different ‘student’ parking lots in hopes of finding a parking spot without wasting a lot of time. The average time that it takes a student to park could vary from ten minutes to an hour, depending on if they get lucky to catch someone leaving school while they are waiting. Sometimes students are forced to fight with another car for a certain parking spot because people will become aggressive to make sure that they get a parking slot.