How to address the issue of parking private vehicle for students in colleges and universities?

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In urban areas, land is a scarce resource and therefore we will need to identify the best possible use and understand the trade-offs between different options for uses of this scarce resource.

Under this limitations, to address the issue of parking in and around school and college, the first and foremost that we should be asking is what should we prioritize and for whom - Should we prioritise parking for a few or prioritise public transport and shared transport systems for all or most?

Every problem has multiple sub-problems. We will need to uncover each subproblem with data and logic and. Once this is in a place, we can prioritize to identify and build practical solutions. This will also need communicating solutions to different stakeholders in emotional and meaningful ways. We also need to work with students, parents and teachers so that students access to private vehicles is reduced.

BMTC, Traffic Police and college authorities should work together to

  1. Make sure that the mobility needs of their students are addressed through Public Transport - bus, metro, shared auto service etc.

  2. Ask Traffic Police to strictly enforce with heavy fines for parking in the college vicinity.

  3. College and college student bodies should conduct some qualitative study through survey and focus group studies.

The objective of these surveys and FGD to get a ground / base level understanding of the following-

  • How many students from college use private vehicles ?

  • Which area these students travel from / which group of students use private vehicles?

  • Why do you they use private vehicles? Why are they not using public transport system?

Based on this study findings, further solutions can be found. For example,
if the survey shows that a lot of people form a particular side of the city use private vehicles to come to college, then options like car pooling or asking a BMTC route will help. If survey says that students use private vehicles because they don’t know the bus timings or routes to and from college, then options like information provision will help.

The idea here is understand why there is a need for students for rely on private transport and then develop solutions one by one for each of the sub-problem. It looks like a huge task, but trust me it is easier to do as a student community.

Do let me know your thoughts on this.