The spring semester has arrived at the University of Central Florida and students are struggling to find parking on campus.
“Between 15 and 30 minutes,” one student said. “Anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half,” said another.
The issue comes after the university decided to close a faculty lot for construction and moved those faculty members into what is now no longer a student parking lot.
UCF has created the “Park and Ride Shuttle” to offset the problem. Students can park at the softball fields behind the football stadium and can catch a ride to campus on a bus that lets them off behind the engineering building.
UCF senior Dom Calandra said, “There’s been days when I’ve had to know I was going to get a ticket because I was pushing it. I was 40 minutes late, 45 minutes late, circling the lot around, around, and around. It’s hard for thousands of business students who have class at the same time when there’s only a limited amount of spots and one garage.”
Calandra said that the parking shortage could even have an effect on his grades.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”79256″]
“I’ve been at UCF for 3 years so I’m in my core classes now. Pretty much all the teachers want attendance or you lose points. You lose letter grades. No matter how early I leave, whether my class be in two hours, it still takes me 30 minutes to park,” said Calandra. “I could be all the way in garage F and still be late. As teachers they expect us to be there. Being here for three years and it’s never changed and I’m speaking for a huge student body.”
According to UCF, there are 13,688 parking spaces designated for students across the entire campus. The main campus has a mere 30,000 students on campus and with majority of classes being in the early morning, the spots don’t turn over very frequently.
