[Purple Haize]

If we had so much money we couldn't spend it fast enough, maybe we could plunk some cash down on a parking garage or two.

[Cider Jim]

Liberty is 400 max, not 600, right?

According to the LU website, the gated DeMoss parking is $600 (for employees and/or students).

https://www.liberty.edu/media/1370/2012 ... grid_2.pdf

[ramartin]

Hello FlameFans!

It’s too bad I don't get the benefit of at least a temporary period of anonymity. At least I didn't need to waste time with a creative username.

Institutional comparatives can provide a good starting point for input about how a single institutional can address parking as long as your plan addresses your own institution's needs. The comparison that the Chancellor referred to and asked me to comment on is a comparison of parking charges at the top 200 institutions based on enrollment, removing community colleges and institutions we know are primarily online and have very small, limited service campuses. Most of the information is from the 2010-11 and 2011-12 fiscal years so you can easily increase the industry numbers presented below by 4-12% since they will be contrasted to the current year Liberty parking rates. Most of my discussion will center on the parking rates that are paid to either the institution, or a corporate third party that manages parking on behalf of the institution.

I'll focus on employee parking since that is the point of the thread and I don't want Sly to move my comment elsewhere on my very first post. Employee parking costs tends to be higher than the cost that students would pay. The average low cost option parking permit for employees was $263 and the average high cost option parking permit was $687. At institutions where it was possible to ascertain “reserved” parking, the parking rate exceeded $800 the majority of the time. While it is not possible to determine what the “average parking rate” that someone would have paid would be since we do not know how many of each cost permit each institution sold, the average parking rate from the list we have compiled for all employee parking groups was $478. In a few instances, we were able to separately identify the costs for “remote” parking which was $127; it seemed that in all cases “remote” parking areas tended to be more than a 20 minute walk to the outer perimeter to the campuses’ “inner campus” and we did find that in some cases transit was not provided. It should be noted that in some cases an employee would have had to pay an additional transit fee in order to be able to use the campuses’ or contract vendor’s transit system and in some cases, summer parking rates are in addition sometimes.

Over the past 5 years on this board some have suggested that taking into account the urbanization of the campus location is relevant. Eliminating institutions that are in a large city or in a heavily suburban area does impact the figures. Here the average employee parking rate is $387 with the lowest cost option average being $189 and the highest cost option average being $586. Remote parking where identifiable was $101. However this is where an institution’s intent for scope and size matter significantly since very large schools even in rural areas become a city unto-itself and end up taking on many of the aspects of inner-city parking management practices, including using cost to manage various proximities to the campus in order to control traffic in its interior campus. Large rural campuses that have allowed the “city” to develop around it on all sides have many of the challenges that a school surrounded by a large city has in providing parking, but lack the benefit of a fully-developed public transportation system to address the problem.

The 2012-13 Liberty University parking plan for employees includes a range of permits of $0 - $600. Less than 1% will have the premium-reserved option ($600-already sold out), 25% will take the remote parking option or non-adjacent campus parking option ($30), 63% will take zone 2 ($50) and 11% will take zone 1 ($400). The average parking rate among all employees will be $89.42 without knowing who will take the various $0 options that are offered. We operate transportation from 6 apartment areas in 30 minute or better frequency and know that some of Liberty’s employees lives within a 1/3 mile of these routes. We will give these employees $0 permits so that they can still bring their vehicles to campus outside of the weekday semester; this will be tracked for the first time this year.

Lastly I’ll add context to the Chancellor’s comment about the remote lot accommodations. Not including the several million the university will spend to relocate the existing intramural field, each space in the remote lot will be over $200 a year in cost to the university. This includes the cost to write off the initial capital expense over 10 years, lights, transportation, police, signage, sidewalks, etc. Bus service will be available from 4:30 AM – 2:30 AM on weekdays and between 7 AM – 6 PM we will do our best maintain under 10 minute frequencies (see schedule for this route below). I took a measurement of the walking stats last May from the “middle-front” of the lot to DeMoss Hall (door near School of Business on the DeMoss Dr. side) walking through the tunnel was .77 miles and took 16:40 minutes at a leisurely pace (see walking log below). At many schools this lot would not count as a remote satellite lot since it is less than 20 minutes away and if measured apples to apples I should have stopped counting the moment I came out of the tunnel at the Liberty Campus side. Also the millions invested in acquiring and renovating new “non-adjacent” campus areas is of some relevance even though it is not reflected in the parking rate. Whether it be 12th Street, Old TRBC, Mayflower Drive Maintenance, or LU Residential Annex, the utilization of these areas to the extent possible makes the traffic and parking demand more management on the Liberty Campus. The necessary approach to handling the additional 350+ employee parking permit demand that these non-adjacent campus takes off of the Liberty Campus would have resulted in a far more dramatic set of steps to manage parking and transportation for the upcoming year. Fortunately because of the Chancellor’s leadership, we have been able to act on the vision of turning the DeMoss Commons area of the Liberty Campus into a first-class academic and residential location and have been able to take measured steps over time to transition the campus.

I voted zone 2.

Link to bus route information:
http://www.liberty.edu/media/4660/72.pdf

Link to remote lot walking stats:
http://runkeeper.com/user/ramartin/activity/91910819

[Hold My Own]

If we had so much money we couldn't spend it fast enough, maybe we could plunk some cash down on a parking garage or two.

Did you honestly just start this up again?

[Purple Haize]

I was just making suggestions. Even incredibly obvious common sense ones

[thepostman]

Not trying to start anything but what is the deal with the lack of parking garages? I love the idea of getting rid of a lot of the black top parking in favor of parking garages on the outskirts of campus...thus making Liberty a true walking campus.

I think it would be great but obviously there must be more to it then that

[Hold My Own]

I was wondering why the newest member was ramartin....now I have a pretty good idea

[JLFJR]

JK, good questions. HR has full time staff now who do nothing but compare staff compensation in our various departments to similar institutions nationwide. This started about a year ago. Some departments were found to be lower than our peer institutions and significant adjustments were made. Others were found to be in line. The process is almost done. COL increases are a little late this year because we decided to wait until these studies were complete and all necessary adjustments were made first.

The parking garage question comes up a lot but every traffic engineer who has looked at our campus reaches the same conclusion -- our campus road system is near capacity and could not handle the daily traffic that a large parking garage near DeMoss Hall would generate. That means any parking garage would be built on the perimeter of campus, probably in Campbell County across from the airport. That happens to also be the location of a new 1100 space parking lot that is under construction now and will be complete by the time school opens. It will have a shelter so employees and students can wait out of the weather and busses will run at 8 minute intervals. I never have seen how a parking garage located some distance from campus would be that much of an advantage over a parking lot in the same location. One advantage, of course, would be that the student or employee would be sheltered from the rain when walking from the car to the bus stop but the question is whether the additional cost of a parking garage (5 to 10 times as much per space than a surface parking lot) is justified when Liberty owns 7000 acres and has plenty of space for satellite surface lots. Parking garages are usually only built when there is a shortage of space.

Richard Martin joined FF and typed a long and detailed comment (I read part of it earlier tonight) but it hasn't been posted because it has to be reviewed by a FF moderator first!

Where is this NCAA megathread? I'll be glad to take a look. I told the faculty a little bit about what is happening in our conference search on Friday morning but I haven't updated the AD yet so I guess I shouldn't say too much on FF

[JLFJR]

OK, I'll try again slower this time. Charging more for parking spots close to DeMoss is likely to encourage more faculty and staff to park in the cheap lots at Green and East and ride the free bus. If that happens, there will be more spaces for commuters near DeMoss. Commuters generally do not come to campus and stay from 9 to 5 like employees do. They generally leave when their classes scheduled for the day are done. That means they park in a premium space for an average of 3 hours compared to 8 hours average for most staff.

Thanks for responding and verifying what I suspected. I was a student here many years ago and like most places the faculty/staff parked in the premium spaces while us students got what was left, many times being relegated to "Egypt", and there was really nothing wrong with that.

Now days though, it's interesting to see the shift in the hierarchy. I suppose this is just another area where I've been told the students have gone from being viewed as students to being viewed as customers. I guess for a business that is focused soley on the monetary bottomline, that is the way to operate. As a private institute of higher learning, it's a rather interesting concept. No doubt if LU still had dress codes and kept freshmen from having cars on campus and required students to park in the outer lots that they couldn't have grown from 5000 to 12,000 and eventually 25k. Best of luck, but I'll just say I'm glad I've been on the outside the last few years looking in and watching this interesting shift.

Actually, premium spaces are being reserved and offered to faculty/staff first so that any faculty or staff member who wants a $400 premium space will receive one before any of those spaces are made available to commuters. Last year, when I was serving on the Governor's Commission for Higher Education Reform, I remember a speech by former Senator Paul Trible, now President of Christopher Newport University. Apparently, the administration there is located on the same campus with students because he bragged about how students got the best parking spaces and faculty/staff parked further away from the buildings. He even stated that his parking space was the furthest from the campus. So, apparently, even state schools that are not known for treating students like customers give students priority in parking. We are fortunate at Liberty to have Green Hall where most of the administration and staff can work away from the academic campus and don't have to compete with students for parking.

[AZjonz]

Hey Chancellor, since we have you here on the boards at 1 in the morning

FTFY

I'm sure Mrs Chancellor is THRILLED
we're all gonna be in so much trouble.
give her MrsPA's phone number

Rumor has it the Chancellor only sleeps 20 minutes a day and that is due to the cumulative effect from blinking. Just rumors though.

[AZjonz]

Where is this NCAA megathread? I'll be glad to take a look. I told the faculty a little bit about what is happening in our conference search on Friday morning but I haven't updated the AD yet so I guess I shouldn't say too much on FF

Here’s the link to all 63 pages of the “NCAA Realignment Megathread”
http://www.flamefans.com/forums/viewtop ... start=3100

Instead of reading all of it, maybe you could just fill in the blanks of the following statement:
“Liberty University will be the newest member of the ________ Conference starting 201_”

This would crash the FF website.

[WildernessVoice]

Liberty is 400 max, not 600, right? Regardless, Liberty's average fee will be far below both VT and UVA plus Liberty's parking is much closer and more convenient, I'd be willing to bet. Also, you need a much larger comparative sample including private colleges like Liberty, not just publics like UVA and VT. I'll get Richard Martin to post here and give you all the data. He did an excellent job of checking dozens of comparable schools. In the end, Liberty had much less expensive and much more convenient parking than its peers. And, for the record, please give us a specific example of Liberty using the cost of living in Lynchburg as a reason for why Liberty faculty are paid what they are paid. Liberty faculty pay has increased every year for the last decade ($3.7M in the last few months alone) and has already surpassed many of our peer institutions. While the low cost of living in Lynchburg undoubtedly helps LU recruit quality faculty, it has never been a factor in setting faculty pay.

Liberty has offered a gated lot of 20 spaces for $600. VT really is $235/year for faculty
http://www.parking.vt.edu/permits.asp
I don't know where the boy who is in charge got the figures he did about $1700/yr for parking—I googled a lot of universities and most are $200-700, including UF, UGa, and other SACS schools. You'd have to go to MIT or Harvard to get $1700/yr, I'd imagine.

My biggest concern is that the handicapped faculty have to pay $400 for handicap spaces. I'm healthy and can walk, but those that are handicapped and have no other choice have to pay $400 for a handicap space? A colleague has already paid it, so that's not just a rumor--I also know of an 80 yr old who is working part-time that will have to pay $400 because he can't walk. I'm really not sure that's even legal--might be something the school should look into before the News & Retreat ("Nothing that's fit to print") hears of it.

[WildernessVoice]

Oh, I forgot a comment I wanted to make about wanting faculty to park far away to make it convenient for the Commuters:

If one student can't find parking, one student is inconvenienced. If faculty can't find parking, 30 to 300 students are inconvenienced when there's no class (I know that happened last year to some).

[PAmedic]

Richard Martin joined FF and typed a long and detailed comment (I read part of it earlier tonight) but it hasn't been posted because it has to be reviewed by a FF moderator first!

For those interested in Mr. Martin's response: it has been approved and is halfway up the page @ the middle of the thread. I missed it the first time due to using the "newest message" feature.

thanks for your info sir.

[BJWilliams]

Hello FlameFans!

It’s too bad I don't get the benefit of at least a temporary period of anonymity. At least I didn't need to waste time with a creative username.

Institutional comparatives can provide a good starting point for input about how a single institutional can address parking as long as your plan addresses your own institution's needs. The comparison that the Chancellor referred to and asked me to comment on is a comparison of parking charges at the top 200 institutions based on enrollment, removing community colleges and institutions we know are primarily online and have very small, limited service campuses. Most of the information is from the 2010-11 and 2011-12 fiscal years so you can easily increase the industry numbers presented below by 4-12% since they will be contrasted to the current year Liberty parking rates. Most of my discussion will center on the parking rates that are paid to either the institution, or a corporate third party that manages parking on behalf of the institution.

I'll focus on employee parking since that is the point of the thread and I don't want Sly to move my comment elsewhere on my very first post. Employee parking costs tends to be higher than the cost that students would pay. The average low cost option parking permit for employees was $263 and the average high cost option parking permit was $687. At institutions where it was possible to ascertain “reserved” parking, the parking rate exceeded $800 the majority of the time. While it is not possible to determine what the “average parking rate” that someone would have paid would be since we do not know how many of each cost permit each institution sold, the average parking rate from the list we have compiled for all employee parking groups was $478. In a few instances, we were able to separately identify the costs for “remote” parking which was $127; it seemed that in all cases “remote” parking areas tended to be more than a 20 minute walk to the outer perimeter to the campuses’ “inner campus” and we did find that in some cases transit was not provided. It should be noted that in some cases an employee would have had to pay an additional transit fee in order to be able to use the campuses’ or contract vendor’s transit system and in some cases, summer parking rates are in addition sometimes.

Over the past 5 years on this board some have suggested that taking into account the urbanization of the campus location is relevant. Eliminating institutions that are in a large city or in a heavily suburban area does impact the figures. Here the average employee parking rate is $387 with the lowest cost option average being $189 and the highest cost option average being $586. Remote parking where identifiable was $101. However this is where an institution’s intent for scope and size matter significantly since very large schools even in rural areas become a city unto-itself and end up taking on many of the aspects of inner-city parking management practices, including using cost to manage various proximities to the campus in order to control traffic in its interior campus. Large rural campuses that have allowed the “city” to develop around it on all sides have many of the challenges that a school surrounded by a large city has in providing parking, but lack the benefit of a fully-developed public transportation system to address the problem.

The 2012-13 Liberty University parking plan for employees includes a range of permits of $0 - $600. Less than 1% will have the premium-reserved option ($600-already sold out), 25% will take the remote parking option or non-adjacent campus parking option ($30), 63% will take zone 2 ($50) and 11% will take zone 1 ($400). The average parking rate among all employees will be $89.42 without knowing who will take the various $0 options that are offered. We operate transportation from 6 apartment areas in 30 minute or better frequency and know that some of Liberty’s employees lives within a 1/3 mile of these routes. We will give these employees $0 permits so that they can still bring their vehicles to campus outside of the weekday semester; this will be tracked for the first time this year.

Lastly I’ll add context to the Chancellor’s comment about the remote lot accommodations. Not including the several million the university will spend to relocate the existing intramural field, each space in the remote lot will be over $200 a year in cost to the university. This includes the cost to write off the initial capital expense over 10 years, lights, transportation, police, signage, sidewalks, etc. Bus service will be available from 4:30 AM – 2:30 AM on weekdays and between 7 AM – 6 PM we will do our best maintain under 10 minute frequencies (see schedule for this route below). I took a measurement of the walking stats last May from the “middle-front” of the lot to DeMoss Hall (door near School of Business on the DeMoss Dr. side) walking through the tunnel was .77 miles and took 16:40 minutes at a leisurely pace (see walking log below). At many schools this lot would not count as a remote satellite lot since it is less than 20 minutes away and if measured apples to apples I should have stopped counting the moment I came out of the tunnel at the Liberty Campus side. Also the millions invested in acquiring and renovating new “non-adjacent” campus areas is of some relevance even though it is not reflected in the parking rate. Whether it be 12th Street, Old TRBC, Mayflower Drive Maintenance, or LU Residential Annex, the utilization of these areas to the extent possible makes the traffic and parking demand more management on the Liberty Campus. The necessary approach to handling the additional 350+ employee parking permit demand that these non-adjacent campus takes off of the Liberty Campus would have resulted in a far more dramatic set of steps to manage parking and transportation for the upcoming year. Fortunately because of the Chancellor’s leadership, we have been able to act on the vision of turning the DeMoss Commons area of the Liberty Campus into a first-class academic and residential location and have been able to take measured steps over time to transition the campus.

I voted zone 2.

Link to bus route information:
http://www.liberty.edu/media/4660/72.pdf

Link to remote lot walking stats:
http://runkeeper.com/user/ramartin/activity/91910819

For those who dont feel like scrolling...

[jbock13]

edit: question answered.

[El Scorcho]

It’s too bad I don't get the benefit of at least a temporary period of anonymity. At least I didn't need to waste time with a creative username.

You're certainly free to register another username, (though I do realize this was probably just a bit of smarm).

[EagleOne]

Last year, when I was serving on the Governor's Commission for Higher Education Reform, I remember a speech by former Senator Paul Trible, now President of Christopher Newport University. Apparently, the administration there is located on the same campus with students because he bragged about how students got the best parking spaces and faculty/staff parked further away from the buildings. He even stated that his parking space was the furthest from the campus.

Thanks for the reply. Out of curiosity, are you going to follow Sen. Trible's lead or are you choosing another option?

[Humble_Opinion]

Last year, when I was serving on the Governor's Commission for Higher Education Reform, I remember a speech by former Senator Paul Trible, now President of Christopher Newport University. Apparently, the administration there is located on the same campus with students because he bragged about how students got the best parking spaces and faculty/staff parked further away from the buildings. He even stated that his parking space was the furthest from the campus. So, apparently, even state schools that are not known for treating students like customers give students priority in parking. We are fortunate at Liberty to have Green Hall where most of the administration and staff can work away from the academic campus and don't have to compete with students for parking

Thanks for the reply. Out of curiosity, are you going to follow Sen. Trible's lead or are you choosing another option?

Not that I have a dog in this fight either way, but I think you are missing the point of his post, which was to state that Liberty's staff and admin can work away from the academic center of campus where most students are on a daily basis.

[JLFJR]

Exactly, Humble Opinion. I think Eagle One was hoping nobody would notice the portions of my post that you underlined. Thanks.

For everyone else, I came across a couple interesting facts today.

Liberty will actually collect LESS in total parking fees this year than it did in the last academic year because there are so many more $30 permits available this year and fewer expensive permits being sold.

There are only 20 $600 permits being sold this year. Richard told me today they were only sold as a test to see if there was a demand for more expensive gated parking. Apparently there was because they are already sold out.

[LUconn]

Not a student or employee here, just a vigilant soldier against parking lot dings:

Is that a parking lot being built just under the paint ball fields on what used to be some sort of lacrosse field? If so, I'm guessing the architect of that idea has never played LU's disc golf course. Hole 17 is going to cause A LOT of dents.

[Humble_Opinion]

Not a student or employee here, just a vigilant soldier against parking lot dings:

Is that a parking lot being built just under the paint ball fields on what used to be some sort of lacrosse field? If so, I'm guessing the architect of that idea has never played LU's disc golf course. Hole 17 is going to cause A LOT of dents.

I'm pretty sure hole 17 will be moved... Liberty has plenty of other places to put frisbee golf holes.

[LUconn]

Well they're sort of stuck within the area between 16 and 18. 17 was a really cool hole. You just take your biggest heaviest disc and let it rip as hard as you can. If you throw it straight enough, you're golden if you get past the pine sapling forest. If you creep at all to the right as most right handers do, there was such as steep hill, you were a minimum of 2 strokes away. It could be pretty devastating.

[NG33]

Well they're sort of stuck within the area between 16 and 18. 17 was a really cool hole. You just take your biggest heaviest disc and let it rip as hard as you can. If you throw it straight enough, you're golden if you get past the pine sapling forest. If you creep at all to the right as most right handers do, there was such as steep hill, you were a minimum of 2 strokes away. It could be pretty devastating.

+1 Hole 17 is my favorite. Mainly because I'm horrible at disc golf.

[ALUmnus]

Not a student or employee here, just a vigilant soldier against parking lot dings:

Is that a parking lot being built just under the paint ball fields on what used to be some sort of lacrosse field? If so, I'm guessing the architect of that idea has never played LU's disc golf course. Hole 17 is going to cause A LOT of dents.

I was wondering that too, but I think they're putting artificial turf on the intramural fields, and a parking lot next to the lacrosse field. Me thinks.