Parking proves costly for uni students
Thu 06 December 2007
Constance McLeod, Bachelor of Journalism
University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) students living on campus at The Village are being hit with parking fines because they are parking on the street where they live.
Council has been giving tickets to students for parking in roadside parks, limited to 30-minute to one hour parking, because there are not enough parking spaces for Village residents. University student Virginia Hobbs lives at The Village and explained the impact the fines were having on students.
“We don’t have the money to keep paying fines. We don’t have an alternative,” Ms Hobbs said. “There are not enough parks for residents of The Village student accommodation.”
Ms Hobbs is one of a number of students living at The Village to receive a fine for parking on the primary school side of the road, across the road from The Village. Students received fines from the council as well as police, and quite often drive to the university in the hopes of parking there.
The student parking at the university does not provide enough parking for students on a busy day, and students are forced to park on embankments on the side of the road. Ms Hobbs said that driving around to the university was ridiculous, when she could make a two minute walk instead.
Ms Hobbs received a $30 fine for parking in a primary school space, and appealed the fine. Although she did not succeed and had to pay, she raised important points about the environment and the public transport system.
“With the threat of climate change this use of a car when there is an alternative option is horrible. It is just a waste or resources and money,” Ms Hobbs wrote. In her letter she suggested turning some of the primary limited time parks into all day parks, or supplying the residents of The Village with resident stickers so they could park there legally.
As of her last correspondence, Ms Hobbs had not yet received any confirmation that her appeal had been received, nor had council supplied resident stickers or altered primary school parking spaces.
Council told Ms Hobbs that they could not do anything about the parking issue at The Village, and that students should contact the owners of the buildings over the matter. “We don’t even know the people whose houses we live in,” Ms Hobbs said.
Although students have been illegally parking for some time before the fines began, council took no action. It was not until parents at the primary school complained about being booked for double parking that the fines began.
“We don’t have (the) time or resources to get together to petition council, and we don’t have the money to keep paying fines. We don’t have an alternative,” Ms Hobbs said.
At the time this article was written, no changes to the parking situation at The Village or near the primary school had changed. Until something is changed, the students living in The Village accommodation will continue to be fined for parking illegally, and will have to drive their cars around to the university and find parking there.
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