Members of the newly formed committee were appointed by Marx from the faculty, staff and student populations. "I look forward to a careful, informed and deliberative process on how best to solve our parking needs, weighing student safety, the environment, the beauty of the campus and costs," said Marx.
The current shortage of parking is the result of construction on new dormitories on the freshman quad and on the new geology and life sciences building, both of which prevent faculty from parking along Barrett Hill Road and along the east side of the freshman quad.
Last spring, Marx proposed that an area of land adjacent to the bird sanctuary be paved to serve as a parking lot for students. However, some members of the College community complained that the solution was not environmentally sensitive. Dave Molina '05, one of the students on the committee, attributed the current temporary solution to the community's response. "The proposed parking lot adjacent to the bird sanctuary failed because there was enough community concern for the administration to reconsider," he said.
"The campus community has been given an opportunity to look for alternate solutions to the one posed last spring,"said Jack Morgan '05, another student on the committee. "This is a chance that I am grateful to have."
According to Professor of Mathematics Norton Starr, chair of the committee, the parking problem has become especially pressing because of campus construction but parking is an issue the administration has been considering for some time.
Creating additional parking space is difficult for the College. A substantial portion of the land which many believe is part of College property is, in fact, town property. "The town common and green extends to the grassy area between Converse Hall and College Hall," said Starr.
Additionally, the grass between South Pleasant Street and the Alumni Gymnasium belongs to the town of Amherst, as does the hill sloping down to South Pleasant Street behind the Octagon. "There are all kinds of constraints floating around," Starr said.
Determining just how many parking spots the College requires is difficult, according to Starr. The records regarding which faculty and staff members have parking permits are not well organized. "It is just plain difficult to see how many active faculty permits there are," he said.
Jim Brassord, director of facilities planning and management at Physical Plant and a member of the committee, said that the committee is investigating the parking distribution on campus in response to the general observation that Alumni Lot is far from crowded.
No option has been ruled out at this point and the committee is still in the preliminary stage of gathering information about the parking options, including the possibility of making the temporary lot on the upper tennis courts a permanent lot.
One option the committee is considering is building a parking garage on what is currently Hills Lot. "Instead of students using the underpass under the railroad tracks, they would build an overpass for the garage," said Starr. "At least the garage has the merit of being physically close to some buildings."
However, Starr indicated that an underground garage is unlikely because it is cost prohibitive-building below ground is far more expensive than building above, even if the above-ground construction is a similar capacity garage. Additionally, it is difficult to build under Route 9 because it is a state highway.
Cost may become a substantial consideration in the process, according to Starr. He explained that since the College has personnel and building needs, the funding for the parking solution is not limitless. "It is not an open ended system," he said. "If we spend a lot here, we need to spend less elsewhere."
Brassord said that the approximate cost for lots off campus near the bird sanctuary would cost approximately $500,000. A garage above the Hills lot could potentially cost six or seven million dollars.
"One of the drivers for the cost of the [garage] is we'd have to build a bridge over the railroad tracks to access the campus," Brassord said.
Starr hopes that the committee will consider the ways other institutions are dealing with parking issues. The Smith College administration recently built a new parking garage to solve its parking shortage. "One of the things I'd like to do as a committee is to look at Mount Holyoke and Smith, maybe even farther to Wesleyan and Williams, to see where their parking lots are," he said. "We need more parking spaces. It'd be nice to see what other schools are doing and what can be done."