CREDIT: ANGELA MCINNES
Parking lots look full now, but the quest to find parking won't be as daunting by the end of September, according to Fanshawe's manager of facilities operations.

There's a lot of looking to be done at the start of a new school term — looking for classrooms, looking for prime study spots, looking for the shortest coffee lines — and for many Fanshawe students, looking for parking.

Despite recent local media buzz suggesting that there may be a campus parking shortage, a College representative said it's business as usual for this time of year.

“Parking is probably average, the same as every September,” Marion Dietze, Fanshawe's manager of facilities operations, said. “Certainly we know that the first two weeks in September are very busy for us, and we always have pretty well full capacity of parking spots being used.”

There are 3,200 spaces available for students, divided between three areas.

Metered lots cost $3 per hour or $12 per day.

In the general lots, students pay a $5 entry fee. This fee has been raised by a dollar since last year to cover the cost of new parking gates.

In the limited reserved parking lots, 2,100 parking spaces have been set aside for out-of-town students who are given the chance to buy a pass through a lottery ran in early summer.

However, with about 400 students left on the waiting list, there are still many from out of town without the pass.

Jake Ouellette drives at least 40 minutes from outside of London to come to class at Fanshawe's Oxford Street campus.

He said he needs another 10 minutes to find a parking spot in one of the two general lots.

“Parking over at the paved lot is just ridiculous,” said the electro-engineering student. “If you have classes early in the morning, pretty much all the spots are taken by around 9 a.m.”

Ouellette is among those who are frustrated with the College's current parking system. He said that there have been times when he is unable to find any available spot in the general lot. In those instances he said he has no choice but to find alternative parking nearby, then take public transit back to campus.

Sarah Meely is a Human Resources student who also missed out on the lottery for parking passes. Instead, she pays the $5 general lot entry fee three times a week to sit in on three-hour lectures. Because parking is limited, she cannot always count on finding a spot and has been late to class while waiting for a space to open.

“My honest opinion is that they need to build a parking garage over by the new residence. It's the best way to solve the problem,” Meely said.

According to Dietze, adding to the parking lots is out of the question.

“Almost 15 years ago the College, the president and many student bodies made the decision that we were not going to expand parking lots on campus. We want to keep the green space, especially when we have three residences and 1500 students on campus on a 24-hour basis, so they can go out and enjoy themselves. I don't see any expansion in parking spaces on campus and it's been like that now for a few years,” Dietze said.

For the time being, students will have to find ways to adapt to the situation by coming in earlier, carpooling, and if local, give up driving to school and use the bus pass included in their tuition.

Dietze said although the lots are currently full on a daily basis, things will eventually slow down.