Event Parking:

OK, its a touchy subject! A lot of our fans just go bonkers when its brought up. They assume that anyone soooooo lazy they won't walk a half mile or so through our beautiful campus to the stadium, should just stay home and sleep all day in their recliner. OK, fine! But I think most of the rest of us had rather see them in CS or the Don on game day. That should be the goal!

My reply to attendance is always that any stadium should be built with a capacity goal of "one empty". What I mean by this is that the ideal stadium capacity is a stadium with one single empty seat on game day, That means your stadium was built with an exact size where everyone who wanted to attend a game had a seat, yet there is still "room for one more". Well that is the way we should look at parking too. There should be as many game day parking spots as possible that can accomodate the total number of campus "visitors" we get. Again, there is an optimal number and of course campuses aren't generally built with the idea they are parking friendly. But a campus like TU where many events occur, the university has to consider it as a significant factor for both events and student use.

We've discussed the setback before and I'm not sure if a solution was ever arrived at whether that section of land should be used by TU or not. (For those who may read this and don't understand what it is, its a parcel of land along Harvard Ave roughly from 4th street to 11th street - and is basically an open field area unused for any purpose.) Its just vacant TU owned land that has been roped off as an additional barrier between TU and the neighborhood surrounding TU. But with the push for more undergrad students, the setback may now come into play as a parking area for TU students living off campus who will need parking during school hours (on or near campus), yet not need the space during event times in the evening or on weekends when events are usually scheduled. The setback would pretty much meet the future parking space needs of commuter students during school hours and would also meet fan parking needs after school hours. Now of course the setback would have to gain approval from the city and there is always politics involved dealing with those people, but again, what is good for TU is good for the city. Working together is a good thing, especially when we argue the importance of TU to the community.

So how much parking is it? Does it even matter? Well, yyyyyyyyes it obviously does. If the entire vacant area along Harvard is dedicated to commuter and event parking, that should amount to roughly 800-1,000 parking spaces. That is significant for events since on event day, a car holds around 3plus people on average per vehicle going to an event. Thus that is an additional 3,000 fans attending an event next door to the Don and only a short 200 yard walk from CS. And with the shuttles available to pick up folks and shuttling them to the front door of DWR and/or CS on event day, those neighborhood parking problems we have would be greatly reduced. Pickup then deliver and then repeat. Very simple.