SMITH: Limited New Brunswick residential street parking creates undue stress for students
Finding residential street parking in New Brunswick is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, specifically near the College Avenue campus.
Ever since the Fall 2024 semester began at Rutgers, my housemates and I have struggled to find parking many times, despite having residential parking permits. Often, when one of us has had to drive for various purposes, such as going home, to work or to class, our spot would get taken fairly quickly, and this would result in us having to park a few streets down.
Moreover, alternative street parking creates even more of a headache when it comes to finding parking.
Alternative street parking essentially occurs whenever street cleanings are conducted in New Brunswick. From April 1 to October 31, cars must move to the other side of the street to park to allow for these street cleanings. During this time, cleanings are conducted, and if residents do not comply, they are ticketed.
This is not to say that New Brunswick conducting street cleanings is a bad thing, but the already limited residential parking creates utter chaos when people try to find parking on the other side of the street.
The combination of complications between overcrowded residential parking and alternative street cleaning days makes parking a chore. I cannot count the number of times I have gone up and down every street to find residential parking, especially the night before street cleanings.
Often, I have been forced to park in the parking lot behind the College Avenue Gym late at night and move my car right after the street cleanings because I could not find an open residential parking space.
Parking for student residents outside the College Avenue campus should be a given, not a gamble. Students should not have to risk parking in spots where they could potentially be ticketed due to crowded parking conditions.
I cannot count the number of times I have seen people get tickets for not following the alternative parking rules. Although the rules are apparent on the signs on every street, I cannot blame some students for accepting the tickets, as finding parking on the other side of the street before street cleaning days is obnoxious to the point where sometimes, it is more convenient to just pay the ticket.
It is no wonder many students look upon the New Brunswick Parking Authority (NBPA) with great disdain. The NBPA has a rating of 2 stars out of 5, with of a total 88 reviews on Google Maps. Many low reviews cite how the NBPA is not very adept at customer service and simply wants to give people tickets for any parking infraction they can.
While the exact motives of the NBPA cannot be spoken to, the problem of overcrowded residential parking in New Brunswick cannot be ignored. This begs the question, how can residential parking be made less stress inducing for students?
One of the ways this issue can be resolved is for the NBPA to be more strict about enforcing the rules against people that are not registered and park on the street. I know people without officially registered street parking permits with the township who take up spots. It should be noted, though, that this solution probably will not change much as certain people will be willing to pay for the ticket.
Another problem I noticed is that even if the street parking limit per household is reached and someone's permit gets denied, they can still reapply multiple times and have a permit pending in the system, allowing them to get away with parking.
I have had a handful of friends continuously reapply for these permits to avoid getting ticketed. A good way to solve this would be for the NBPA to not allow people to reapply for permits after being denied for reaching the household limit.
Also, as Google reviewers mentioned, the NBPA seems eager to ticket people. If the NBPA were more lax and understanding of the residential parking situation, this would allow for more leniency if students have trouble finding parking, although this will most likely never happen.
Another solution to help clear up parking spots would be for Rutgers to open up a parking lot for the overflow of resident students (especially during street cleaning days) in the surrounding area to park in if they are struggling to find a spot. This lot should have a system to verify that drivers are Rutgers students, such as having them present their student ID to be able to park.
But it is worth mentioning that this could be complicated, as New Brunswick residential parking and Rutgers parking are managed by two separate entities.
Regardless, even if any of these solutions worked, residential parking will probably still be at least a bit problematic. The best course of action to find residential parking would be to plan ahead and try to find parking before it gets crowded.
David Smith is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in journalism and media studies and minoring in psychology. Smith's column, "David's Diary," runs on alternate Thursdays.
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