McPhee: Frustration equals ‘the price of progress’

As campus enrollment grows, more construction projects are beginning to materialize, leaving students frustrated as they fight for parking.

"The first day of class was complete chaos in the parking lots," said Megan Williams, a senior majoring in public relations. "Flipping the library lot was a little ridiculous. I haven't seen the new white part filled up yet."

Before the semester began, the Recreation Center parking lot and Telecommunications Building lot were fenced off in preparation for upcoming plans to build two new parking garages. Additionally, the lot between the library and the Bragg Mass Communication building went from ‘green' to ‘white,' and the former ‘white' lot next to the Paul W. Martin Honors Building became a ‘green' lot.

 "With the opening of the College of Education, we had quite a few more faculty coming to this side of campus with the closure of Founders Lane," said Ron Malone, MTSU alumnus and assistant vice president of events and transportation. "It is problematic to have students driving through a white decal lot and then searching for parking spaces. It creates traffic flow that can be detrimental to pedestrian access and things like that. So, we decided to reverse these. We gave the entire honors lot to students and gave the remainder of the library lot to the white decal."

With this change, Malone said the faculty gained about 40 spaces.

While many students felt frustrated due to this change, the administration said the short-term inconvenience will be worthwhile because of what it means for the university's future.

"There's some construction going on regarding different road improvements, new roads, a second roundabout that we're building to take folks from the campus to Greenland," said Sidney McPhee, university president. "On top of that, we of course have the new student union building. We just completed the education building. We are beginning construction for two parking garages, plus the new student services building."

The Student Services Center will be a "one-stop-shop" that helps students cut the travel time spent looking for specific offices located across campus. It will have financial aid, bursar registration and other business offices on campus.

The Student Services Center will be connected via skywalk to the new parking garage by the Recreation Center and will also have a skywalk connecting it to the new student union building across the street. The building will offer parking for visitors, which has been very scarce prior to construction.

"All these services, and I know it's inconvenient at this time for students and people that come to campus, but it's progress for our university, we're a growing campus," McPhee said. "But we're trying to catch up with that growth in providing the kind of facilities a campus this size needs for the student population."

A pre-construction meeting for the parking garages is scheduled for Jan. 26, and construction equipment will be on site the following day, beginning the process of building the two garages, which will be for student use only. The garage next to the Telecommunications Building will have 498 parking spots, while the one close to the Recreation Center will have 492 spots. Substantial completion for the lots is slated for March 2013.

Along with new buildings– including a new science building that will house the biology, chemistry and physics departments– and new parking garages, the university is working on improving the bus routes for students. A silver line has been added to the pre-existing blue, red and green routes.

"We've got a bus shelter that we're going to move closer to the bus stop sign at that gravel lot, maybe that'll encourage people to stay there for a little bit and wait for the bus to come through," Malone said. "One of the most important things about the shuttles is that they allow us to move a very large number of people in a very short amount of time."

The silver line will run red's route in reverse from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., peak hours for transportation on campus. Any other time, it will cut across Rutherford Boulevard to make the route quicker. Also, it will be stopping at the gravel lot on MTSU Boulevard so students don't have to walk to the inner part of campus if they choose not to.

"We're more congested than many major metropolitan cities, and if you're in New York City, you don't attempt to drive your car to Wall Street. You find the nearest public transportation system, you park your car in the available lot and then you hop on the subway or something like that ,and you use the public transportation system that's available to you," Malone said. "That's what we have to start seeing happen on MTSU's campus, because with the large number of individuals, we are just as congested as major metropolitan cities. There has to be a mindset that, ‘I'm going to get up a littler earlier, I'm going to get to a perimeter lot and I'm going to give myself about 20 to 30 extra minutes.'"

Malone said traveling from the Rutherford lot to the farthest point on campus – the KOM stop – should only take eight minutes. There have been issues with traffic due to construction, which he mentioned would add an additional three to four minutes on the red and silver lines.

"What I've found out is when students complain about parking on the campus, they're really not complaining that they can't find a parking spot," McPhee said. "They're complaining they can't find parking that is really next to the building that they have their class and they want to leave home 10 to 15 minutes before class begins and pull up next to the building, and that's just not going to happen."