By ANGELA REEVES
Gated parking lots are being implemented on campus this fall as the first phase of a new parking enforcement plan.
Faculty parking lot 16, north of the Jesse Knight Humanities Building, and lot 5, east of the Knight Magnum Building, are the first lots to have electronic gates installed. Access to these lots will a computer pass to open the gate.
Lt. Steve Baker, traffic division manager for BYU, said the gated lots should greatly reduce the number of parking citations written each year.
“It will literally prevent 40 percent of the citations we are writing right now,” Baker said. “We are working from a management philosophy of prevention instead of enforcement.”
Beginning August 31, gates on lots 5 and 16 will be tested. Permits will be required by October 1. If these prototypes function adequately, other gates could be installed in more central lots on campus as early as Fall Semester 1999.
“We are just going to ease into this. We don’t want to surprise anyone or cut anyone off,” Baker said. “It will allow us to get this up and running to our expectations.”
In an attempt to level out the time when public access becomes available in faculty lots, lots 5 and 16 will experiment in opening at 6 p.m. instead of 4 p.m.
Baker said the change should begin to help with the congestion problem on campus.
“There is a real safety concern because of the traffic jam with incoming students and outgoing faculty,” Baker said.
Also this semester a few R parking lots have been changed to Y lots. R student parking lots 37, 49, 19, and 20 have been designated Y lots allowing students who pay for the more expensive Y permit to park closer to campus.
Student parking lots 30, 33, 34, 36, 56, 57, and 59 south of campus now require a Y permit 24 hours a day. Parking maps can be obtained in the Traffic Services office.
Also effective this fall, the fine for parking in a designated disability space without a permit has increased from $50 to $100.
Faculty and student parking permits are now on sale at BYU Traffic Services. For more information call 378-3906 or access www.byu.edu./stlife/up/traffic.
