SFU Surrey Student Parking: Not enough parking spots?

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SFU DECAL

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uploaded by NathanielFung

     Majority of students that attend the SFU Surrey have to deal with where to park on a daily basis and it can become very frustrating. Students are having to constantly miss parts of their lecture/labs to the parking lot to ensure that they haven't been given a ticket for exceeding the time limit allowed.

     Basically the only two legitimate places to park that are available to students include the Parkade (SFU via Diamond Parking) and the Central City skytrain parking. The 500 parking decals that are available for the "parking lottery" for students allows you to park on the 3rd and 4th levels, on a five-level parking lot at the mall. Diamond Parking Services restrict the other levels of parking for mall customers and not students. Additionally, there is a three-hour maximum time limit for each mall visitor. 

     So where do all the students suppose to park? If students are lucky in the parking lottery then by all means, you have a parking spot right? WRONG! I am a first year TechOne student and for the past two semesters I've been lucky enough to win the parking lottery. Somehow I can still arrive at school at 930 in the morning and not have a secure parking spot in the parkade. As an estimate there should be around 300 spots on each level of parking (including P3 outdoor parking) and with 500 decals given out, how do the rest of the 200 winners park? To add to this professors also park in the designated parking levels as the students, which even lowers the available parking spots.

     The Diamond Parking Service offers students different locations to park. It requires you to purchase a parking pass at an “off-campus site”, such as a nearby Safeway store or the King George Station parking, which is more than a 10 minute walk. The cost for these parking passes are in the range of $50.00/month according to the following website (http://www.surrey.sfu.ca/community/parking_transit.html).

     The Central City Shopping Centre has 132 stores and outdoor parking away from the Sfu parkade. Best Buy, T&T, Future Shop, and Zellers all have their own little parking section, even enough for the smaller retails shoppers to park. Does the question arise now.. Why does the DPS restrict students to park on P2 in the parkade? The food court, Brick, and Tim Hortons already have about 125 spots to park on P1. If the second level of the parkade would be open for students to park, then there wouldn't be a hassle circling the parkade looking for a spot, wasteing gas and polluting the air.

     In the end, you'll be forced to park your car somewhere that isn't in the P3/P4 sector of the parkade. Student enrollment are rising up on an average of 25% a year, which makes it even harder for people to finding parking spots. To add to this, it doesn't help when the third level outdoor parking is always under construction. With the amount of tuition we pay as students, I believe we should be given another level of parking! The second floor parking is always just HALF filled with customers which means they can easily open up the P2 level for customers and students on a first-come-first-serve basis.