Daphanee Dean

CE 260
December 4, 2009
Extra Credit

Designing Parking Lots

There is a common complaint among the student body about the lack of parking spaces.

While this is mostly caused by how parking has been assigned between students and faculty

members, and the fact that each year the number of students enrolled at the University of

Alabama, part of the problem is due to the poor design of the parking lots. For some of the

parking lots, the area where they were built is not being used efficiently, and this will cause even

more problems in the near future for the increasing number of people on the UA campus.

An example of one of these bad designs can be found in a parking lot close to the Quad.

In this parking lot, the lines for each parking space were painted at a 90 degree angle from the

curb. Yet the corners of the concrete that borders the parking spaces were built at a 60 degree

angle. This inefficient design takes away from the number of parking spaces by cutting into the

area it should only be bordering. On one side of the concrete meridian, there is a loss of four

perfectly good parking spaces, meaning there is a loss of 8 parking spaces in total. To fix this,

the UA would only have to rebuild the part of the concrete that curbs the parking spaces.

Another example of a badly designed parking lot is one of the parking lots across from

Martha Parham and Burke Hall. Here the parking spaces are actually too small widthwise. If

there is a truck on one side of the parking space, you can get in the parking space but you will

not be able to get out of the car on the side close to the truck. There are even two parking spaces
that are so small, only the tiniest cars can get in them without being over the line. The lines

should be repainted to make the parking spaces a reasonable size.

The last example is the parking lot right in front of Rodgers library. It was designed only

for motorcycles, with it blocked off by short, black poles so that only motorcyclists and

pedestrians can access the area. Sadly, there are a total of nine parking spaces for motorcycles in

this area. These nine parking spaces take up about a third of the area, showing how this space is

being used inefficiently. Seeing as this parking lot was specifically made for motorcyclists, this

area should have at least twice the amount of parking spaces as it does now. It could be the

central parking lot for motorcyclists on campus, instead of them having to go to parking lots with

only 2 parking spaces.

The reasoning behind these bad designs is hard to explain. Maybe the original designs of

the parking lots were more efficient, but changes were made to them as a quick fix to

accommodate an unforeseen problem when the parking lots were being built. However these

small adjustments, such as rebuilding a curb or adding more parking spaces to use the provided

space would improve the efficiency of the parking spaces. Since the amount of freshmen

enrolled annually is increasing to help the UA reach its goal of 28000, this is a problem that

needs to be fixed soon in order to accommodate the students at the UA.