How does this “benefit” other students? They're the ones who are being inconvenienced by scofflaws and if it's like most other places quite likely endangered: the same people who park illegally tend to be cavalier about blocking bike lanes and curb cuts, speeding, rolling through crosswalks, etc.
As someone who commuted to college parking illegally is just something you have to do. I had parking fines I had to pay before receiving my diploma even though I made the grades and such. Parking and universities is a mess.
If you are low income, and need to get to school but have no other way to go than to drive, what else should you do?
It seems like you are suggesting that some people have other choices than driving. There are a lot of colleges with no accessible public transportation infrastructure.
Many people don’t have the financial means to do anything else, especially when there isn’t the public transportation infrastructure to support them.
what does low income have to do with this? driving is expensive. between fuel, vehicle maintenance, parking, and insurance, driving your personal vehicle should not be the "low income" choice.
If there's truly no choice other than driving (which isn't really possible, because if driving alone is an option then so is carpooling), your income level has nothing to do with it. If there is a choice, then low income is not a reason to drive.
Your comment completely ignores the reality for many, many people.
I was a low income college student who drove and public transportation was not an option for me. Outside of very large cities public transportation is often inefficient to the point that the logistics of attending college and having a job just don't work. Between my part time job and classes I wouldn't have made it to either on time if I took a bus. I sometimes carpooled, but I only knew a few people at the college and work/class schedules didn't often align enough to make ride sharing a possibility. So I bought a very crappy car and basically prayed to the gods every time I used it that it wouldn't break down. It wasn't ideal of course, but being poor never is.
And I was lucky. So many people have problems and commitments that make this situation a lot more difficult, like having a kid. Can you imagine relying on a slow public transportation system while also juggling school, a job, and child care? I can't.
I've seen a lot of these type of comments on HN and my takeaway is that an awful lot of us are totally oblivious to the realities of living in poverty. Although maybe the real takeaway should be that people in general are often bad at viewing the world from any perspective other than their own. I really wish people could be more understanding.
>what does low income have to do with this? driving is expensive. between fuel, vehicle maintenance, parking, and insurance, driving your personal vehicle should not be the "low income" choice.
At the low end it is not really that expensive.
Initial buy in is like $1500, $1k for the shitbox, $500 for the paperwork you need to legally operate it.
Fuel isn't exactly cheap but it's not a lump sum so if you're poor you can manage.
Maintenance is solved by bringing beer and pizza to someone who does that stuff on the side (for any instance where the upper middle class would shell out hundreds for a licensed professional this is the solution the lower classes usually have). If something really catastrophic happens you get another shitbox and are late on your other bills.
Unless you live somewhere where public transit is both decent quality and cheap and parking routinely costs money then driving is often cheaper than public transit.
You left out insurance, which is a big chunk of change, and all of the costs for when you don’t have a family mechanic who doesn’t charge by the hour and needs parts, not to mention the cost of towing, missed work, etc. when the cheap car breaks. Theft is still a concern unless you can afford safe parking, too - even a beater usually has parts worth something to a thief.
I’ve had cheap cars before and solidly subscribe to the Sam Vines boot theory: unless you can do all of your own maintenance, it’s more expensive long-term but the only option for someone who can’t swing the higher up-front costs. Around here (DC) this is often cited as a poverty factor in favor of better transit since these costs all add up and the many low-paying jobs require hours and/or locations which aren’t great for the limited transit options (e.g. if you work at a restaurant you leave around when the rail is shut down but the bus takes 90 minutes and driving means a ton of upfront costs plus $$$ parking).
>the same people who park illegally tend to be cavalier about blocking bike lanes and curb cuts, speeding, rolling through crosswalks, etc.
this is generalization at the next level.
Anecdotally, when I was in university, I saw parking fees for the spot that I paid for in my first semester go from $180 for the semester (13 weeks) to $600/semester in my 4th year. I think parking tends to be a bit of an issue at many universities across north america.
We have public records here in DC. Most times I report someone doing something antisocial (e.g. blocking lanes, crosswalks, refusing to yield, etc. - things which actively inconvenience other road users) using hmdapp.io there’s at least a 50% chance that they have multiple unpaid tickets. The highest I’ve seen is over $10k, but others have found drivers over $40k.
That's absolutely the case, and traffic scofflaws ought to be hit where it hurts: yank their license. Traffic signs (including parking) are there to keep traffic flowing, they don't put them up because they look pretty.
I think the argument is that this isn't to the benefit of other students, only to the benefit of other students that park improperly. Improperly parked cars decreases parking supply and puts more stress on students who park properly since they are unlikely to double park or park in a non marked location, whereas bad actors would be willing to deal with the low supply by parking even more improperly.
We're not celebrating people who park selfishly, we're celebrating people who use a clever hack to defeat a harmful solution to the problem of people parking selfishly.
The point of DeCSS and qrpff, for instance, was not that piracy is a good thing but that DRM is a bad thing.
Driving an individual vehicle and parking it at a college is the first-order bad thing here. The parking spaces occupy useful land and the cars pollute the campus air.
Everything else is about people trying to avoid being asked to take responsibility for the impact of doing that.
OU is a campus built around the assumption that automobiles are the primary mode of transport. You cannot tell people "just don't drive" at a campus like this; you have to build a campus and its associated infrastructure such that people have reasonable alternatives. This is society's problem to fix, not drivers'.
Paying for a parking spot isn't actually taking responsibility for doing that - how does it solve any of the problems that illegal parking causes?
Also, what exactly would taking responsibility entail? How can individuals build public transit any more than they can redesign the movie industry? Holding individuals responsible for their single car's pollution sounds like holding then responsible for their plastic straws while ignoring the impact of major corporations on pollution.
None of that sounds like taking responsibility for the impact of occupying useful land and polluting the campus air, which is what you claimed to care about.
(Even squatting on parking spaces doesn't show a lack of responsibility for the impact of parking spaces occupying land - it's a calculated use of a small amount of a resource in order to aim for more of that resource in the future. You may as well say that someone who invests their money instead of keeping it safely buried in the ground isn't being responsible with their money.)
Don't park selfishly and you don't suffer the consequences. It's that simple. The only issue here is that selfish parkers get their car back at all, they clearly aren't responsible enough to own one.
Why should the campus subsidize the car-owning students? If those students want exclusive use of a public space why not let them pay market rates for it?
Sure - this is always a balancing act but given how expensive cars are to own and the students who can’t use them, I would generally favor increasing transit and sidewalks, etc. rather than subsidizing parking since that benefits everyone.
The students are paying for a service from the University. It's very reasonable that the University provide parking space for those who can't afford to live on campus. Actually, it's in their best interest, unless they want to be an online school. And thus similarly in the best interest of all students, if they want a locally accessible University to exist.
The students are paying for an education. If they prefer to drive, their fellow students who make other choices should not be expected to subsidize them.
Are you kidding? If parking was free then nobody would be able to park there. Everyone would drive even if they only lived a few blocks away or a single bus ride away.
It would be unavailable to students who actually need it.
I saved money by living off-campus and driving to school using the cheap car that I also needed to get to work. There are a lot of places in the US like that, where you can't afford not to have a car.
> If that would seriously be the issue with free parking, then build parking garages.
This sidesteps the underlying decision of who pays for those garages. Either you charge for parking and the people who use it pay, or you don't and every student (even the ones who take the bus or carpool) pay.
It's Oklahoma. The city is likely very spread out and even if there are public transport options, you will need a vehicle to get to and from the bus stop.
It's not UC Davis or Europe. Btw, if living near the main centroid of Davis, it's faster to bike than it is to drive or take a bus because parking + walking takes time. I even had the gate code to park right next to classrooms (it's good to know the parking folks, especially on rainy days) but that still took more time and costed more money than biking. Davis is also one of the most walkable cities, especially living around downtown.
PS: I took the ten year professional student plan between working at Stanford for a couple years and consulting. I had half of my courses canceled in 2000 when they couldn't find lecturers because most were out making $250-500k in industry.
Because schools pretend to charge cash in order to separate casual drivers from those that absolutely need it. However, given the costs of car ownership and tuition, the cost of parking permits are generally (a) not a deterrant to “casual drivers” (people willing to bear the cost without urgent need), (b) disproportionately impactful on those that Do need to drive, (c) basically just milking students.
Taking up spaces with abandoned cars is a particularly miserable thing to do that makes the original underlying problem worse!