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While driving to North Campus, Syracuse University junior Jack Cavanagh has spent mornings circling Walnut Park looking for a place to park. It’s a short commute from S. Beech Street, so he’ll only drive if he’s running late to class. Recently, while going up and down Walnut Avenue and Walnut Place, his passenger started to shake his head.

“I’ve got to find a reasonable spot. I can’t just park illegally,” Cavanagh recalled telling them.

In August 2020, the Syracuse Common Council approved an increase in parking ticket fees. City estimates at the time suggested that Syracuse could raise about $1.1 million in revenue from the price hikes, something the city desperately needed facing a pandemic-induced budget deficit and millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets. So far, the change in pricing has disproportionately impacted parking around SU.

After the legislation was passed, alternate side parking violations rose from being a $25 fine to $40 from April to October. The fines increased from $30 to $75 in the winter.

The Syracuse Police Department issued approximately $3.7 million in parking ticket fines in 2021 and 2022, according to data from OpenData Syracuse. Over those two years, SPD issued 37% fewer tickets while also increasing the amount of fines by 8.5% compared to 2018 and 2019. But, the increase wasn’t delved out evenly across the city.

In the area around SU and ESF’s campus, SPD issued $137,245 in fines in 2019 – the last full year of the city’s previous ticket pricing. In 2021, the department issued $213,960 in fines, a 55.9% increase. In 2022, the amount of fines lowered slightly to $211,225.

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Common Councilor Latoya Allen, whose district represents most of SU and ESF, did not respond to The D.O.’s request for an interview.

Lieutenant Matthew Malinowski, SPD’s public information officer, said parking checkers are civilian workers who typically work in different “zones” across the city. Malinowski confirmed in an email to The D.O. that some of the city’s parking zones are “around the university property.”

Outside of the zones, SPD checks specific streets with a high rate of violations. The police department can also use a mobile unit to respond to parking violation complaints outside of areas that typically have parking infractions. Malinowski said that most cities will have limited parking based purely on space, but that the neighborhoods around the university have specific challenges of their own.

“The streets generally have to have (alternate side) parking because they’re not wide enough to accommodate parking on both sides year-round,” he said. “If vehicles are parked on both sides, it’s a challenge for us with emergency vehicles getting through and especially in the winter with snow plows clearing the streets.”

Daniella Le, a professional staff member at the Barnes Center at The Arch, said she had trouble figuring out how odd-even parking worked when she lived on Euclid Avenue as an SU student. Over two years, she said she received 20 parking tickets between parking around SU and in the city.

In 2022, 47.6% of the tickets SPD issued near SU’s campus were related to odd/even parking violations.

There are legitimate reasons why people will purposefully violate parking signage, however, said Dr. Nazanin Ghaffari, an assistant professor in ESF’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Some could park illegally to reduce the amount of time walking to their home because they feel uncomfortable; someone else could do the same just to get their groceries inside quicker.

Outside of different types of travel, there’s also more overall travel happening in places like SU, Ghaffari said. She said universities tend to closely resemble small cities, filled with concert halls, religious centers, medical centers, restaurants, housing and stores.

“In terms of the number of trips that happen every day on campus, as opposed to the number of trips that happen every day in any part of Syracuse, I can assume there’s a potential for more violations, and then, as a result, citations,” Ghaffari said.

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SU also acts as a hub of events that are not just for students, faculty and staff. The JMA Wireless Dome holds just over 49,000 people and hosts A-list celebrities like Elton John as well as SU’s football, basketball and lacrosse teams.

The sudden influx of people who don’t normally park around campus can disrupt typical patterns of traffic and parking, Ghaffari said. SPD issued an average of 31.4 tickets a day near campus on days when Syracuse football played at home in the Dome last year, compared to 8.2 when the team was away for the weekend.

To solve issues with parking, Ghaffari said many college campuses work with local governments to make public transit more easily accessible for students.

SU currently has a partnership with Centro, the city of Syracuse’s bussing provider, that enables students to ride certain sections of Centro’s routes for free when they present their student ID. SU also has worked with Centro to enable the university’s employees to purchase bus passes “pre-tax.”

United Syracuse, a coalition of labor unions working on SU’s campus, created a petition at the beginning of the semester to address issues of parking on campus for students, faculty and staff.

The petition called on SU Chancellor Kent Syverud and Parking Director Joseph Carfi to rescind the 2023-24 staff and faculty parking fees and create a new committee to address campus-wide parking issues. The coalition also called on Syverud and Carfi to increase shuttle service on campus.

Roger Rosena, a member of Syracuse Graduate Employees United’s bargaining committee, said that while he can’t give an exact number of signatures collected so far, the petition has been successful.

Both Malinowski and Ghaffari said the university area has a high population with not a lot of parking. Malinowski suggested that due to a lack of space, people may be more willing to take a risk and park illegally. However, he reiterated the importance of the regulations in place. Each bit of regulation, from odd/even parking to no parking areas, has a reason for being where it is, Malinowski said.

Malinowski added other factors, such as driver inexperience, could contribute to the high rate of parking tickets in the university area.

“A lot of people think, ‘what’s the harm in stopping from here to (the) corner?’ Well, that really prevents certain types of vehicles from making a turn on that street,” he said.

Brenna Stewart, a first-year graduate student at SU, said she was in a situation where she had to park in a spot where she knew it was illegal. She still risked it.

“I felt like I really didn’t have a choice or else I would be late to class,” she said.

While he said he tries to find a legal spot, Cavanagh said he’s been in the same position.

“It’s weighing the benefits of getting to class on time … versus the probability of getting a ticket,” he said.

Published on September 28, 2023 at 12:41 am

Contact Kyle: [email protected] | @Kyle_Chouinard