Student Perceptions of Parking
Parking is generally a major issue on most campuses. We addressed parking in this survey to identify what percent of students own parking permits, and students views on the cost of parking and the convenience of parking on the NDSU campus. Given what we have learned, the most promising ways for MAT to capture new ridership by improving services are to increase the convenience of the system with more routes and more frequent service and increase marketing.
About two-thirds of survey respondents have parking permits. If this number is representative of the student body then 6,944 permits were issued (11,146 students x 62.3%). However, according to Tim Lee, campus police, there are only 5,439 regular and 260 temporary parking permits on campus totaling 5,699. University parking statistics indicates there are 2,085parking spots for student residents, 14 for resident hall directors, 1,410 for off-campus residents, 571 for married students at student housing, and 77 designated disabled parking spots throughout campus. These numbers equal 4,157, or about 79 percent of the total parking permits sold.
Figure 4.21 Students with Parking Permits
As we found out earlier, 62 percent of the student body had parking permits. If this percent is projected to the entire student body, it would yield almost 6,900 parking permits. This indicates there are close to 2,800 more parking permits sold than slots available. An over-sold condition may explain why students are not happy with the parking accommodations; just under 5 percent rated convenience as very good (Figure 4.22). Conversely, these results show that more than 45 percent of the respondents rated parking accommodations either poor or very poor. For students who live off campus, just over 84 percent rated parking convenience as fair or poor, and 80 percent of students who work off campus rated parking fair or poor. This may be favorable for transit.
Figure 4.22 Parking Convenience
Parking affordability has the same shaped graph as parking convenience. A fair rating is a little higher at more than 40 percent of the respondents. When analyzing by classification, the upper classes, junior through graduate, graded even higher percent poor on affordability than the lower classes, freshmen and sophomores. Theoretically, this should be advantageous to transit usage when students perceive parking as unaffordable. It also could mean students may be willing to pay more if assured that a parking spot is available when needed.
Figure 4.23 Parking Affordability
One of the complaints by many students is their inability to find parking slots when needed. The oversold condition explains this dilemma. Both parking affordability and parking convenience have a high percentage of fair or poor rating. A poor and very poor rating for convenience and affordability is just above 30 percent, and the very good rating for both is less than 5 percent. These low approval ratings should be favorable for transit.
Demand for the NDSU Circulator
Four questions were asked to help identify the current demand for the NDSU Circulator. We wanted to gain insight into student familiarity with the circulator, the usage of the circulator, whether there are additional locations on campus where students want the circulator to stop because the distance is too far to walk, and how long students would be willing to wait for the circulator. Responses to these questions gave good indications of the value of the NDSU Circulator.
A little more than half of the students indicated they were familiar with the campus circulator, but when asked if they used the circulator the number dropped to only 12.8 percent. Some of the comments from students indicated the circulator needs to stop at more locations, schedules were not convenient for users to access, people were unfamiliar with the bus schedules, and there is a need for more bus shelters. Most of these concerns deal with promotion of the service and understanding of available services on the Circulator. This may imply the need to develop routing that is better coordinated with student movement.
Figure 4.24 Students Who are Familiar With or Use the Circulator
In the comment section of the survey, a number of students mentioned a need for additional bus stops. However, in the survey question regarding additional bus stops, only 15.5 percent of the respondents indicated a need for more stops. Almost half, 46.6 percent, of the students said there are locations on campus which are too far apart for walking. When questioned on using the campus circulator, only 12.8 percent indicated they had ridden on the circulator. This percent difference would indicate there is room for growth in ridership with improved services. It also appears that there are services currently available that students are not fully utilizing. A more extensive marketing program may be needed to convey the information to interested students on availability of NDSU Circulator.
Some students are patient and are willing to wait up to 10 minutes for the circulator, but the majority are only willing to wait seven minutes (Figure 4.25). Because of campus class schedules, the circulator needs to strive to be dependable and on time. Information pertaining to the scheduled times the bus will arrive at each bus stop must be posted at all locations and readily available to the whole student body at all times. When dividing the student body into three classification groups (graduate; freshman and sophomore; and junior and senior), a higher percent of the graduate students were willing to wait up to 10 minutes than either of the other two groups.
Figure 4.25 Time Studetns are Willing to Wait for Circulator
Demand for the NDSU Circulator can be identified by looking at the number of students familiar with, and the number of students using, the circulator. There seems to be a large disparity between the two percentages, yet, at the same time a number of students indicated there are a number of locations on campus located too far apart for comfortable walking. The largest percentage of students are willing to wait up to seven minutes for the circulator. This implies how important it is for the circulator to be on schedule.
Campus Transit Accommodation
This section includes the last three questions answered by the survey respondents. The questions were about the number of shelters on campus, whether heated shelters were desired and the need for additional bus stops.
We asked students if they thought NDSU should have more shelters and if they should be heated shelters (Figure 4.26). The two responses on shelters appear in Figure 26. The results showed that 43 percent of students wanted more shelters and 50 percent of students wanted heated shelters. This response indicates additional investment into shelters and heated shelters would be well received by a large number of students. It is important that transit developers be sensitive to the needs of the users because transit is competing with the comfort and ease of private vehicles.
Figure 4.26 Desires for More and Heated Shelters
The last issue had to do with additional bus stops. Just over 15 percent of the respondents indicated more stops/locations were necessary. The survey respondents made the following suggestions: Churchill, Dakota Drive apart-ments, the Fargodome, Dolve Hall, FA lot, Memorial Union, music building, parking lots, Reed-Johnson Hall, Stockbridge, T-lot, University Village and Wellness Center. The circulator already stops at some of these places so this may imply there is some communication gap between the information available to student users and what the students perceive as available services of the NDSU Circulator.
The last set of questions may imply that transit services on campus are in fact better than many students perceive them to be. Nevertheless, the students would appreciate an increase in the number of bus shelters, both heated and unheated, and they would also like more bus stops.