Joelle Lang-Fredman
WMAL.com

COLLEGE PARK — (WMAL) Beginning Fall 2017, freshmen and sophomores at the University of Maryland will no longer be able to park on campus.

Parking spots – at a minimum, several hundred of them – are being cut due to the addition of several new academic buildings on campus. David Allen, executive director of the Department of Transportation Services, said the department had a decision to make.

“We either need to build more space or have fewer people,” Allen said. “The campus has decided that we will tell freshman and sophomore resident students that they won’t be able to park anymore.”

While Allen said he anticipates that this change will inconvenience students who want to have their cars on campus, he doesn’t believe freshmen and sophomores should come to college with cars.

“Personally, probably not a good idea for freshmen to have a car as soon as they leave home anyway,” Allen said. “As a parent, having a freshman or even a sophomore having a car and that independence that it provides with everything else new that is going on, my decision was not to let my kids have a car.”

Upperclassmen who will still be able to park on campus will experience higher parking rates. Parking fees are used to fund the maintenance of parking facilities and pay workers. In order to compensate for the decreased number of students paying to park on campus, other students will have to fill in the gap. The extra cost has not yet been determined.

“The fact that there will be fewer people paying to park, means there is less money coming in,” Allen said. “Based on the number of parkers we won’t have, we will at that point be able to create our budgets and charge everyone else more.”

The parking cuts will not affect commuter lots.

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