A pain in my back
I am new to parking at the University of Guelph. During my four years and change as a graduate student, I couldn’t justify paying for gas and parking when I had already paid for my bus sticker and I could walk to school in about 25 minutes. The plan was not to drive until the weather got bad. Instead, I invested in a helmet and fixed up my old bike so I could get some exercise and fresh air on my way to and from work.
Unfortunately, a few months ago, I hurt my back pretty badly when I fell on my stairs, and although I’m well enough to go to work now, I’m not 100 per cent recovered. My biking-to-school plans flew out the window so fast I think of them as The Flash.
I considered my options: a bus pass or a parking pass. Since I had just bought a new vehicle and realized that a monthly bus pass costs more than a monthly parking pass, I thought, “Oh, this will be nice—driving to school instead of taking the bus. It’s more flexible. It’ll be quicker. I won’t have to be out in the cold for as long in the winter.”
“…I spend each pain-filled step pondering who designed this waking nightmare of a parking situation…”
But—funny thing—turns out that I was hilariously wrong. Finding parking on this campus is actually the worst. Having done my undergraduate studies at U of T Mississauga, I can’t remember ever searching for parking this hard or, once I found a free spot, for it to be so ridiculously far away from my location.
Okay, maybe it’s not “ridiculously far” but when I can walk from home to campus in 25 minutes and it takes me 30 minutes to find a parking spot and walk to The Ontarion office in the University Centre, something isn’t quite adding up.
It’s still painful for me to walk and even more so when I add in the weight that I’m carrying. But I don’t really have a better choice available to me, so I walk past lot after full lot, lugging my bags full of things I need to get through the day—like my laptop, which I need to take in so I can stand while I type. All of this is even more frustrating because the longer I have to do these walks, the longer it takes for me to fully recover.
To distract myself, I spend each pain-filled step pondering who designed this waking nightmare of a parking situation and how to solve all the parking problems in my known universe.
I understand that maybe it’s too late in the game to put in an underground parking structure at a more central location, or maybe it’s against by-laws to put in a multi-floor parking garage, but would it be totally impossible for a shuttle to run every so often that takes people dealing with injuries to the UC at least? Or having a closer lot for those who can demonstrate that they need this situation to be just a little more accessible than it is? Or, we could just get those travel tubes from The Jetsons. Both situations seem equally probable to me at this point.
“Like a creep, you prowl up and down every lane, in lot after full lot…”
Why are the parking lots even so full? By how many spaces are they overselling parking passes? What if every spot is full and you have a pass, but can’t find a spot? Surely there are empty spots, but how do you find them quickly? Like a creep, you prowl up and down every lane, in lot after full lot—it’s all starting to feel frustratingly repetitive.
When you finally make it to the office, out of breath, late, sore, and sweating from the exertion that most people don’t think twice about, you apologize for being late, mumble about parking issues, smile, and then power through it because, again, you don’t really have another choice available to you.
I also spend a lot of time going around telling anyone who’ll listen that I have this great idea for a parking app. “Here’s the idea,” I say, “So, they put sensors on every parking spot that wirelessly connect to your navigation system. Then, when you drive onto campus it’ll direct you to the closest free spot to the building you have to go to.”
I tell people this because I genuinely believe that some tech-savvy Guelphite or Gryphon will tell me that such a thing exists or just invent it for me. I tell people this because it’s not even October and I need to believe this to make it to April without curling into the foetal position and rocking—not that I can because, you know, the pain in my back would be almost as bad as parking at the University of Guelph.
Photo courtesy of Heather Gilmore.