The current state of available student parking for Heritage Halls residents can be described in one word: Atrocious. According to the BYU housing department, there are “approximately 3,000” Heritage residents, which are given access to “B lot” labeled parking. Surrounding the Heritage Halls buildings, there are roughly 200 parking spots. 90 B lot, 9 service vehicle, 20 “30 min. only,” 6 “60 min. Only,” 61 G lot, and between 20-35 spots for hall advisor and disabled. With the help of a little simple math, multiple issues are quickly visible: 

1) The 90 B lots available only accommodate for .03% of Heritage Halls residents. 

2) Hypothetically, if only ¼ of residents brought a vehicle, the 90 B lots would still only accommodate for 12% of residents. Obviously, the number of residents who have a car is much higher, which makes the percentage of lots available even more atrocious.  

3) Lets include the Wymont overflow, which is estimated to have around 200 spots. If ¼ of residents do bring a vehicle, there would only be enough spots for 38% of them. This percentage includes the 90 lots surrounding the 16 heritage buildings. (BYU parking services did not have stall information for lot 52B, or Wymont).  

What is more, Wymont overflow is exactly 1 mile away from the Central Heritage building and a 15 minute walk. Anyone can tell you, a 15 or 20 min walk in 20 degree weather has an impact on your immune system, which BYU should take note of concerning their extreme focus on campus health. On top of this, BYU police are relentless and merciless in their pursuit to administer ridiculously expensive tickets for simple violations.  Sadly, the school’s actions- or should we say inaction- demonstrate their total lack of concern for the parking situation.  This is made clear by the fact that the last survey conducted and published regarding parking available was performed in 2006.  It has literally been more than a decade, 14 years to be exact, since they have researched the parking situation for students. So, the school fails to survey and maintain appropriate levels of parking for its patrons, then assesses astronomical fees to students when they can’t find adequate parking and are forced to park outside the designated spots.  They have created a lose, lose situation.  We can do better than this!  

Changing the A lot parking by the conference center and on the south side of the NEF field would open up over 50 spots for buildings 13, 14, 15, and 16. A second option would be to allow students to park on the west side of the conference center and HCEB overnight, as there are hundreds of spots available, but all are unreasonably marked “no overnight parking” currently. A third option would be to allow Heritage residents to buy a parking permit that gives access to A and G lots, seeing as how the construction taking place across from the Creamery has stripped the students of a large parking lot. Any one of these suggestions would vastly improve the current situation and would cost the school nothing more than changing the wording on a sign. 

Concerning the grossly overpriced citation fees, an alternative to pay for parking citations is demonstrated by Murray State, where those given a citation bring a set number of canned goods for donation.  Or, if canned goods to local foods banks isn’t your forte, keeping inline with the idea of helping the community, another option to pay for citations is through service hours that can be done through Y serve. There are many alternatives.  What should NOT remain an option is gouging students on parking tickets and forcing them to pay for a problem the school is ultimately responsible for having created.  

The current lose, lose parking debacle at Heritage Halls must end.  If we are challenged as students to ‘enter to learn and go forth to serve’ surely our administration can lead the charge by continually learning from and improving their service to its most important patrons- the students. Let’s start with something simple- like providing them a place to actually enter and park!