Shortly after becoming UNM President, Dr. David Schmidly signed UNM onto the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. The commitment is to achieve “climate neutrality as soon as possible.”
Given that transportation creates about a quarter of our carbon emissions, one would think decreasing UNM’s transportation-oriented carbon footprint would be a high priority. So why does Parking and Transportation Services, the department charged with transportation planning, continue to build more parking structures?
Everyone agrees that the streets and available parking in and around UNM are often burdened.
There’s a theory in transportation and land use planning that different housing densities lend themselves to different modes of transportation. The lower housing densities, like most of Albuquerque, lend themselves to single occupancy vehicle (SOV) travel.
Ultra-high densities, like the island of Manhattan, lend themselves to more human-scale transportation modes like walking, taxi and transit. The middle densities, like the UNM, Nob Hill and Downtown areas lend themselves to transportation modes that reduce congestion, but can get you further faster than walking. In this middle ground transportation options like transit, bicycles, in-line-skates, skateboards, scooters and motorcycles work best.
Just watch Central Avenue at noonday, four-lane de facto parking lot or ask the Frontier owner if he has enough parking for the lunch crowd for proof of how car un-friendly middle density land use can be. Conversely, the congestion brought to the University area by more cars than the area could comfortably handle makes it less pedestrian and bicycle friendly for those of us who know better than to drive a car around here during peak traffic hours.
If you live in those lower densities, up in the heights or on the west side, you need a car. But when you bring your car into town you’re coming into an area that, by its very nature, is not car friendly.
John Dewey once said, “A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved.” The thing is that not everyone agrees on the solution(s) because not everyone agrees on how to define the problem. Whereas I have always seen this situation as a transportation problem, UNM has always seen this situation as a parking problem.
Therein, as they say, lies the rub.
Part of the reason for our disparate views is mindset. I’ve always lived in high– to-mid-density areas and use bicycles, motorcycles and mass transit as my main transportation modes while (I’ve always presumed) the people who run parking have more of a car mindset. The fact that the department was called “Parking and Transportation Services” is a giveaway.
The other reason for our disparate views is the fact that PATS funds its operations and some of its capital improvements with the parking and permit fees it collects from you. Successfully dealing with the transportation problem means fewer cars, which means fewer revenues. Anyone else see the conflict?
But there’s more.
Over the years, PATS has contracted a company called Walker Parking Consultants to solve its parking problem. If how you define a problem defines its solutions, then which consultant you hire further defines those solutions. Walker designs, builds and recommends parking structures as a solution to parking problems. With “transportation” twice removed, it’s no wonder that every Walker study recommends more parking structures to be built on the UNM main campus.
The thing is that more parking structures may alleviate, but not solve, the parking problem, but more parking structures will exacerbate the transportation problem by attracting more cars that will continue to overburden the streets in surrounding communities and reduce the bicycle and pedestrian friendliness of the area while increasing UNM’s carbon footprint.
So why is UNM continuing to build more parking structures?
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
