“Parking” worries for high schoolers used to entail finding a parking spot private enough for a romantic interlude. Today, it means being able to park close enough to school to beat the morning bell.
School district officials, the town, parents and the kids themselves are addressing the issue as the number of available parking spaces for San Ramon Valley High students has sped past the point of criticality, some say, with overflow cars filtering into adjacent neighborhoods and downtown.
Planners estimate the school would need an additional 350 parking spaces to accommodate current student demand. And when you run out of land on which to build a new lot for those spaces, planners say, you start looking up.
A $46 million renovation project currently under review by district officials has suggested that removing several single-story classroom structures and replacing them with a three-story building capable of holding each of the 43 ground-level classrooms could help ease the parking crunch – freeing up enough land for additional future parking.
But even with the re-design, the number of future parking spots created falls far short of what is needed. With that in mind and the prospect of increasing downtown parking issues on the horizon, the Danville Town Council recently stepped up and sweetened the deal a little, holding out the prospect of $1.2 million dedicated to construction of a parking project capable of accommodating an estimated 200 additional slots.
Town leaders are aware of the current parking shortage and the fact that jostling for spaces in a morning game of musical chairs has created issues for the kids, their parents, the school, and nearby businesses impacted by the parking crunch. Some neighbors have maintained that better mass transit, car pooling and restricted parking plans for all high schools should be implemented before multi-story classroom and parking structures are built.
MEETING: Thursday night, 6:30 p.m. in the SRVHS Staff Lounge, 2nd floor of the Commons.
The first guy who makes those Michael J Fox Back to the Future mag lev skateboards is going to make a gizillion dollars.
They’re not the only ones looking to build multi story parking. Other schools are also trying to find a way to ease the parking crunch on their campuses.
Schools should stop providing free parking. If they charged to park, then they could perhaps afford adequate parking. I have to pay to park when I have jury duty, a required government obligation so I see no reason students can’t pay to park when they make the choice to drive.
A monthly payment plan – with a break for students who pay with money earned from a job – might be a nice incentive. Also premium parking for scholastic accomplishments awarded on a rotating basis.
I like the car stacker idea.
Can’t wait for all those car alarms to go off simultaneously in that fancy new parking tower. Payback for the sound systems the schools blast at us. Seriously.
More of us coming and the man who made the earth isn’t making any more of it.
Editor,
Quite privately, Danville neighborhoods leadership, in cooperation with Alamo regional counsel committee, have started a viral campaign to restrict student parking in neighborhoods and force car pooling at campus. The goal is to reduce parking on and surrounding SRVHS rather than increase parking slots.
Stay tuned!
Hal