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
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.”
