On-campus parking shortage has been a long-term problem at the University of Illinois. Not only for off campus students, visitors also have troubles finding temporary overnight parking. Even for those who made it to open parking spaces, confusing regulations made it hard to settle their cars down.

Our Goal

Our team was proposed with a high level topic of improving parking on campus, but we decided to focus on making parking more easy and accessible for every student and visitor in need.

Early insights

We found that students closer to campus prefer public transportation over driving because of difficulty for parking, and they usually don’t drive to classes unless there are severe weather conditions. However, for students living further off campus without access to buses, they would have to park in a far lot with shuttles that run infrequently and ends as early as 6:30 pm.

Students & Faculty

• Confusing parking regulation

• Notice unused permitted lots

• Street parking induces traffic

• Infrequent buses from off campus lots

• Difficulty for visitors

• Permit wait-list takes up to 1+ years

• Traffic slow down from street parking

Building new parking structures is not only costly but also not carbon footprint friendly. Furthermore, adding new spaces will encourage more cars on campus and more traffic congestion.

On the other hand, students often found it frustrating that so many permitted spots were left unused at peak hours and could have been used had they been open for all.

Certain permitted parking lots are available for all after certain hours, but every lot has very different regulations that it is hard for drivers to know until they pull up to the parking lot, just to realize that they would have to find a spot somewhere else.

Parallel Concepts

Some universities introduced smart parking solutions, which incorporates parking meters to an app and make empty meters discoverable to those searching for spots. However, such solutions might bring more distraction to the drivers, and increase traffic while people are driving around searching for that one open meter on the street

Deeper insights

Several reserved parking spots were empty during the most popular times for class. For students who do not own a permit, they would have to take the risk of citation to find a spot before classes begin. With the parking resources readily available, is there a way to utilize the current parking system more efficiently?

Initial Ideas

We saw a few possibilities after the initial user research.

First, we can make the campus more public transit (buses and bikes) friendly to reduce the need for driving even more. The introduction of bike share has improved bike usage on campus, but frequent vandalism and difficulty to find bikes in designated areas is still an issue. Furthermore, harsh weathers would still stop students from biking with their frozen faces. Buses were also a common method of transportation for students closer to campus, but it is hard to be inclusive for students living even further off campus, and increasing bus schedule for very select few students would also be unprofitable for the bus service.

Confusing regulations on parking lot policies also induced a lot of traffic from drivers entering and exiting a parking lot after finding out that they are restricted for a certain time period. The signage could be updated to make it clearer for drivers to see far away.

Lastly, to target the fact that not all parking spots are utilized efficiently, we thought of the spot sharing solution. For permit owners, they can leave their reserved parking spaces open for rent to other students and faculty in collaboration with the University’s parking regulation system.

Spot-Illini

The spots will be available to those in need for a charge, so it would be helpful in different situations while students aren’t encouraged to always bring their cars for convenience because of the cost. On the other hand, owners of the parking space can share their resources for a small profit. Lastly, the parking department can benefit from return of revenue by taking a small portion of the charge and use that to improve other parts of the commute.

In terms of regulation, drivers will follow a strict time period that they have reserved, and the cars will be subject to towing after the reservation expires. Spot owners and the university parking department will also be able to monitor the reservations.

Prototype & Testing

I produced a prototype of the application and posted on an online forum Reddit for users to evaluate anonymously for the user interface and functionality. While the team received comments on more simple design and suggested features, there was not enough time for us to reiterate the design.

However, if time permits, a few metrics can be helpful in testing the solution’s effectiveness such as change in traffic congestion during “rush hour” for classes and the amount of parking citations issued to see whether students were resorting to parking violations because of lack of availability.

Copyright © 2019 Annie Jiang.