Most students are happy to be back to normal academic life but many are not as happy about the daily game of finding a place to park.
First-year paralegal student Amanda Sequeira has often struggled to find a spot.
Sequeira told Et Cetera that because of the limited parking, she’s late to class “about five days in the week,” because she spends her time driving around the lot looking for a spot.
She isn’t alone in the endeavour as one-quarter of the approximately 70,000 full and part-time students are single-vehicle drivers, according to the Humber College Transportation Demand Management Plan.
This has been an ongoing issue for decades at Humber and doesn’t appear to be getting better any time soon. The headline in a 1978 issue of Coven, the former Humber student newspaper at Humber, proclaimed “Winning parking war college officials claim.”
Parking continues as an issue on campus and has been a story since 2014 in the Et Cetera newspaper.
While the parking garage offers more parking for drivers, exiting the garage at the end of the day can take up to 30 minutes or longer.
First-year student Daniel Badanjek, from the Sports Management program, has to choose the parking garage, which opened in 2019, due to parking lots being full and mired with traffic.
“I have to resort to the parking garage, which isn’t ideal because of how far it is from the buildings I have to go to,” he said.
“It gets the job done, it’s just not as good,” Badanjek said.
Another issue is parking passes. While students purchase pass being sold at roughly $600, many find it to be cost-prohibitive. The parking pass-only spots also filled up very quickly this year, which left many students searching for parking almost every day.
Parking Manager James Irvine told Et Cetera they encourage the use of transit due to the high population of students enrolled at Humber.
“With over 20,000 students enrolled, we encourage transit use, and if a student decides to drive, there will always be parking space limitations as there are at many other colleges and universities,” Irvine said.
Lot 5 was closed because of LRT construction, but Irvine said it’s expected to reopen Sept. 1, 2023.
“At North campus, we expect to get back most of what was formerly known as Lot 5 on Sept. 1, 2023, which has been/is being utilized as the main materials lay down area for the Finch West LRT construction,” Irvine said.