Rutgers to cut back number of parking spaces
Antonio Calcado, the executive vice president for Strategic Planning and Operations, held a town hall at the beginning of Thursday's Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA) meeting. He spoke about reducing campus parking in the coming years and how Rutgers determines class cancellations due to winter weather.
Calcado said parking will become a rarer sight at Rutgers over the coming years.
“Every time we put a building up, we put it on a parking lot. That will continue to eliminate parking. If we want to be sustainable, we need to do away with parking. That’s the bottom line,” Calcado said.
Parking is an aspect of college life that many students find frustrating, according to a press release from RUSA. Reduced parking also coincides with the goal of the University to reduce its emissions.
“Parking, perhaps the most frustrating part of commuter life and for many resident students as well, will continue to decrease in availability over a very long-term period. The University plans to be more sustainable, and decreasing the amount of cars on campus is a big part of that plan,” Calcado said.
Calcado also said the bus system must continually improve if Rutgers continues to reduce the amount of parking available on campus.
“If we want to do something about parking, we must continue to improve our bus system. We’ve invested some serious money into it as well, including additional buses,” Calcado said.
Calcado also said that additional data will help further improve the bus system over the coming years.
“We get a weather briefing package from the state of New Jersey that we look through ... What we now do, is students get an email, and that email gives you the weather forecast and what the status of the University is,” Calcado said.
Calcado also said the University takes numerous variables into account when determining its operating status.
“What we take into consideration is accumulation, ice and freezing rain. We look post-storm as well. What the temperatures are going to be the following day, all these things are taken into account,” Calcado said.
Students are able to reach out to the University over weather-related concerns, Calcado said.
Despite the nuance taken to make a decision on whether to close the University, it is still a flawed process, Calcado said. The University will continue to look for ways to improve its decision-making process.
Once the town hall was complete, the meeting held an election to fill a executive board vacancy following the previous secretary’s resignation, according to the press release.
