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Key Topics
Requirement
Write a proposal that promotes ideas for improving student parking at Harrisburg University.
Solution
Improvement of Parking Conditions in Harrisburg University Campus
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this paper the problems of parking in the Harrisburg University campus has been discussed. Decreasing number of free parking spaces in the campus has become a source for inconvenience for the students and faculties. In order to improve the situation a few alternative options has been suggested. They are- encourage the use of bicycles in the campus, making the option of carpooling available for the students and the option of using modern technology to efficiently use the parking space currently available. After discussing the above three options and by going through the advantages and disadvantages of all three of them it has been concluded that in the short term it would be best to promote the use of bicycles in the campus. This will cost less than making huge investment to improve the infrastructure by building another parking garage. Also this option will be good for the environment and increasing number of campuses around the world is opting for this solution.
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INTRODUCTION
Harrisburg University of Science and technology was founded on 12th December, 2001 in the city of Pennsylvania. It was established to meet the increased demand of expertise in the domains of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Harrisburg University has a modern state of the art campus and the students have a dynamic life in the campus. The campus also includes a parking zone where the students and faculties can park their automobiles on daily, weekly or monthly basis. The parking lot is operated by Standard Parking and the garage is located within the university building. Although the garage is not bad as it has many facilities including payment through credit card and it is fully automated but there is a scope for improvement to meet the demands of increased number of vehicles. In this paper alternate options for improving the parking lot will be discussed and proposals would be made to improve the situation of parking in the university.
BODY
Parking Options
Car parking can be divided into two major types. They are-
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1. Automated Car Parking
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2. Traditional Car Parking
Automated Car Parking system
It includes multilevel car parking mechanism. The advantages of this type of car parking mechanism are-
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i. It requires less space for parking
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ii. Pollution is reduced in this case.
The disadvantages of this parking system is-
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The initial cost of setting up such parking facility is very high (Guo, 2013).
Traditional Car Parking system
In this type of car parking mechanism cars are kept side by side on the ground. The advantage of this type of car parking mechanism is that the set up cost is very low compared to multi-level parking mechanism.
The disadvantages of this type of parking mechanism are-
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i. The space required for parking is much larger than multilevel parking.
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ii. The cost associated with this type of parking is much higher.
PRICES
In garages across US the parking prices are charged in terms of hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis (Geng & Cassandras, 2011). The rates charged in the Harrisburg University parking garage are listed below-
PARKING OPTIONS IN OTHER UNIVERSITIES IN THE REGION
In order to get a clear picture about the parking conditions in the Harrisburg University, comparison with other universities in Pennsylvania is done. For this purpose parking facilities of Penn State University and University of Pittsburgh has been discussed.
PARKING IN PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
In the Penn State University there are 27 parking facilities in the campus and they are managed by the Department of Parking Services. This includes garages and lots operating within the campus. While most of the facilities in the campus are reserved for permit holders like faculties and students there is still a lot of space for parking for visitors. 5% of the parking space in the facilities is reserved for Low Emission Vehicles. This is done to encourage the use of such vehicles within the campus (Litman, 2012). There are many regulations regarding parking there and heavy fines are imposed if parking regulations are violated in any way. A detailed list of parking charges for the current year of students is given below-
PARKING IN UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
Permit is needed for parking in the university campus. There are numerous locations for parking in the university and students and faculties with valid permit can park in those locations on an hourly basis. Depending on the needs of the students different permits are given to different types of students’ like- resident, commuter, evening and special visiting students. These students have to follow different procedure to get there permits and the procedure are listed in the university website (Frank & Bradley, 2014). A map of the parking facilities available to the student is given below-
PROPOSED OPTIONS FOR PARKING
1. BICYCLES
Harrisburg University can encourage the use of bicycles in the campus. They can create separate path and parking space for bicycles. Many of the campuses around the globe are opting for bicycles in the campus. The students can have the facility of signing up for using bicycles for a day or for a week. At the end of the time period they can just return it to the parking lot. Students themselves don’t have to buy the bicycles (Chen & Pinelli, 2013).
Advantages
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i. Reduced air pollution in the campus area.
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ii. Bicycles cost very less compared to cars and a small parking space can have the capacity of parking a lot of bicycles.
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iii. Bicycle riding is good for health and fitness for the students.
Disadvantages
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Creating a separate path and parking spaces around the campus can be costly.
2. CARPOOLING AND VANPOOLING
Carpool and vanpool mean sharing a car or van. University of Washington greatly encourages this practice by providing free parking for carpools whereas they charge hundreds of dollars for individual cars (Galland & Knapen, 2014).
Advantages-
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i. If the students share car then it means reduced traffic in the campus.
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ii. Reduced traffic leads to reduced air pollution.
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iii. It costs less for the students and for the university. Universities need to upgrade their parking space in the campus if there is increasing demand for it and it can cost millions of dollars. It gives them the opportunity to invest that amount elsewhere.
Disadvantage-
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i. There is a need to get a minimum number of people sharing a car to make it work. Finding people to carpool with can become a problem especially at the time of urgency. Also, it might be difficult with adjusting people with they are sharing the car.
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ii. Punctuality can also become an issue. If someone is late for the journey then the rest of the people have to wait for the other passengers to arrive.
3. SENSOR TO FIND PARKING SPACE
While some of the time it might be the case that there are no parking spaces available but in other cases finding an available parking space can become frustrating. This can be solved by using a sensor to find the parking space. The device is small and easy to carry and it runs of batteries. This technology was implemented by a parking technology organization named Streetline (Noworolski & Cheng, 2011). Many universities have partnered with Streetline and the users need to use Parker app which is easily available in the App Store and Google Play.
Advantages-
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i. This app is easy to use and this technology allows managing parking lots with higher efficiency.
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ii. Oregon State University has installed the sensors in their parking lots to ensure that people with disabilities can easily find parking spaces in the parking lots.
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iii. Increased efficiency in the parking lot management domain in the campus.
Disadvantages-
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While this technology improves parking efficiency but it does not solve the whole parking space problem. Sometime simply there is no space to park in for the students
RECOMMENDED OPTION FOR PARKING
After discussing about the various parking options available to the university it can be concluded that opting for an alternative in bicycles is the best and cost effective measure. It would solve the problem of increasing the number of parking space which would have cost the institute large sum of money. Having bicycles in the campus also promotes a healthy image for the students and it helps to reduce air pollution in the area. Setting up cost for new parking area for bicycle will be costly but it would be very less compared to setting up cost of a new car parking lot or garage (Nakamura & Abe, 2014).
CONCLUSION
Harrisburg University campus is in the need of upgrading its parking lot to make life easier for students and faculties. While the current parking lot is not bad but the parking condition needs to be upgraded as a whole. The cost of building new infrastructure for a parking garage can become a burden and also it will take long time to finish the project. In meanwhile the university can use technology to efficiently use the parking garage that is available at the moment and they can go green by promoting bicycles within the campus.
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1. Chen, B., & Pinelli, F. (2013). Uncertainty in urban mobility: Predicting waiting times for shared bicycles and parking lots. 16th International IEEE, 56-59.
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2. Frank, L., & Bradley, M. (2014). Urban form, travel time, and cost relationships with tour complexity and mode choice. Transportation, 89-93.
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3. Galland, S., & Knapen, L. (2014). Multi-agent simulation of individual mobility behavior in carpooling. Journal of transport, 112-115.
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4. Geng, Y., & Cassandras, C. (2011). A new “smart parking” system based on optimal resource allocation and reservations. 14th International IEEE, 12-15.
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5. Guo, Z. (2013). Does residential parking supply affect household car ownership? The case of New York City. Journal of Transport Geography, 47-49.
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6. Litman, T. (2012). Transportation cost and benefit analysis. Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 23-25.
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7. Nakamura, H., & Abe, N. (2014). Evaluation of the hybrid model of public bicycle-sharing operation and private bicycle parking management. Transport Policy, 147-149.
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8. Noworolski, J., & Cheng, S. (2011). Wireless mesh network parking measurement system. Urban Design International, 78-81.
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