Fort Collins is growing. Campus is growing. The only part of our community that refuses to grow is room for parking.
There are larger number of residents, a larger number of students and the same amount of parking spaces. So, naturally, we aren’t going to give up our vehicles just to come to college; we have transportation needs, and a lot of people have taken to parking in the surrounding neighborhoods around campus.
Ad
However, the City of Fort Collins is now going to make residents of these neighborhoods pay for parking permits if they need more than one. We understand that over-occupation of space in front of houses is a problem; any Fort Collins resident can attest to that. But making housing even more expensive within city limits is not solving the parking crisis – it’s making a larger one.
Between inconsistent bus schedules and even more inconsistent weather patters, more and more students have begun to trust on the most reliable form of transportation around FoCo, which happens to be their personal vehicles. Students are not going to be apt to give up this convenience, and will simply just be forced even further out, creating a parking crisis a little further from campus.
This is a city built around students. We are, a large population within city limits, and we don’t think that it’s too much to expect some amount of respect for that – respect in the form of parking spaces.
But forcing us to pay even more money that we don’t have for a convenience that we are entitled to is solving nothing.