Students push to make parking signs clearer

Confusing campus parking lot signs could become easier to understand if an RHA proposal to code them by color and shape is successful.

The Residence Hall Association unanimously passed a measure last week endorsing the move, which they said would save students time and money by improving the signs’ readability. The RHA proposal suggested adding unique symbols  — such as a red “X” for lots restricted to faculty or staff permit holders — to sign corners. All letters and numbers on signs are vinyl applications, or “stickers.”

“We’re not looking to change the look of the whole sign,” said RHA Transportation Committee member Laura Murphy, a junior history and secondary education major. “The main idea is to add a colored shape in all of the corners, or maybe just one corner, and different symbols would stand for different lot restrictions.”

The Student Government Association pitched a similar idea last semester but dropped the concept after Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Frank Brewer told students all signs on the campus were going to be revamped by fall 2011.  

The planning stage for the redesign begins in January, and Brewer said he was open to student input.

Administrators seemed warmer towards the RHA’s proposal, which is smaller in scale than the SGA’s approach and could serve as a cost-effective interim fix before the signs are replaced. The SGA is now working with the RHA on the new proposal, though they have not yet passed a bill formally supporting it.

The idea appears popular with student drivers, many of whom cited misreading or misinterpreting lot signs as a reason for receiving a $75 parking ticket.

Senior criminology and criminal justice major Peter Hallman, who commutes daily, said he has received about three pricey tickets in the past year for mistakenly parking in a restricted lot.

“I think it’s a big problem, because you’ll read the sign that will say, ‘You can park here after four’ or ‘seven’ or whatever, but then at the very bottom it will say ‘faculty only,’ so that part is easy to miss,” Hallman said. “If they had some kind of simple symbol system, then that would be perfect.”

Senior psychology major Fernanda Vieira also liked the idea. She said she has received multiple tickets because she couldn’t differentiate between the signs.

“I guess I didn’t read the sign carefully,” Vieira said. “But it was kind of confusing because it looked exactly the same as all the other ones, and I thought that for most of them that no permit was required after four.”

The Department of Transportation Services would pay for the changes to the signs, and DOTS Director David Allen says he fully supports a plan that makes minimal changes to the existing vinyl applications.

“If they would just be adding a new sticker to it, then the cost would be negligible,” Allen said. “We have people in our office working with them to brainstorm ideas.”

Despite administrators’ willingness to work with students, Allen said that he has not received many complaints about sign readability. The department doles out 80,000 citations a year — a sizeable portion of which are given for lot mix-ups and confusion.

After the plan is approved by DOTS, both RHA members and Allen say the next step is getting the approval of the Architecture and Planning Board, a division of the university which oversees aesthetic changes on the campus. Brewer said that if the change was very minor, students may be able to bypass the process.

apino at umdbk dot com