The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

College planning council talks future parking alternatives

The College Planning Council met Tuesday, Oct. 7, to discuss the Transportation

Alternatives Group’s current efforts and concepts to help reduce parking congestion on

campus.

Parking is a particularly hot topic during the first weeks of school and also an ongoing

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daily issue for both students and faculty at City College.

The California Coastal Commission will not allow additional parking to be created and

demands that City College be responsible for handling the parking situation.

“The City perspective is that there isn’t a parking problem,” said Dan Watkins, advancing

leadership committee representative. “The problem is too many cars.”

Joe Sullivan, vice president of business administration, counsel member, and TAG leader

sought to gain insight and feedback on a pilot project that will be attempted next semester

to reduce the parking problem.

This pilot project will be used to discover if the overall idea for faculty shuttles,

carpooling or vanpooling will work with a monthly incentive.

The board stressed that the overall point of the project is to be sustainable and to ensure

that there is ease of access to campus for both students and faculty.

Sullivan approached the Student Senate last Friday to discuss the possible installation of

a bike station on east campus as well as getting the Santa Barbara Bike Coalition to create

a repair station in order to encourage students to use alternative transportation.

“A lot of times people stop riding to campus because they’re bikes are unserviceable,”

Sullivan said. “So there will be a little shop on campus to make them serviceable.”

The implementation of bike sheds with an electric lock that can only be opened by the

use of a student ID was another concept presented by Sullivan along with the possibility

of using electric bikes.

The counsel asked a lot of hard questions and gave viable points about TAG’s efforts in

order to have a clear picture about the projects but was nonetheless happy to have some

conceptual solutions on the table.

Superintendent President Lori Gaskin was thankful for the work TAG has put in, “It just

goes to show that no good deed goes undone.”

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