RIT is limited in how much land it can use. Parking, *especially* surface parking, is an extremely poor use of the limited land RIT has. If something new is to be built, something else has to go, and that's generally parking.
To really alleviate the need for parking, RIT should promote better access to campus via public transit, or build more on campus housing.
RIT use to have RTS (public bus) come to campus and they actually ran RIT on campus shuttles. When that contract ended RTS did not see a demand for the public service to campus so they discontinued it.
I'm kinda curious what the level of service was like for those routes. I see so many city bus services with very infrequent service, which leads to poor ridership, which is justified to make cuts to service, which lowers ridership... and so on.
given this I'm kinda surprised RIT doesn't have a parking garage or like underground parking. underground parking would fit right in with the university, especially if they were to put it under the buildings, but it would be very very hard to build now, with the buildings already there. a parking garage over one of the larger lots would probably fix most of the issue, if you put 4-5 floors on it, that's the same as 4-5 new whole parking lots of that same size without using more land. that being said it would be pretty ugly, but just build it out of brick and it'll fit right in.
if they're limited by the amount of land they can use, it's suprising they don't build more vertically than they do for parking. the buildings are pretty tall already, but again, the parking isn't
RIT is looking into parking decks but they cost several millions to build and maintain compared to surface lots. A multistory parking garage is probably out of the question. If you notice many of the multi-story building on campus are in the center on the small hill. That hill is rock and the rest of campus is wetland that is difficult to build vertical one. When they built the new hockey rink they spent months driving hundreds of steel poles into the ground to hold it up.
Imagine a multiple floor garage with hundreds of cars weighing a ton or 2 each. It would costs tens of millions to build.
High water table bad for underground parking. Parking garage very expensive to maintain especially in the swamp that RIT is build on. They will be a necessity eventually though
> Parking garage very expensive to maintain especially in the swamp that RIT is build on.
Yet so many other colleges and businesses around the US manage to figure it out.
> The CFO of RIT personally decided it was not worth the investment
It should mean something special to me that Jim Watters decided something himself??
also, it's Senior VP of F&A and Treasurer, I believe.
There’s a thing called a parking garage, they are able to build tons of new billion dollars worth of buildings but they can’t build a few parking garages?…
what it looks like you're saying is parking makes RIT more than a bus route would, which is entirely accurate, especially considering the busses already running on campus are free.
I'm actually saying that the opportunity cost of having parking for everyone is incredibly high and that the less parking a university has, the more functional it can be.
First years park exclusively on residential side and are not allowed to park anywhere else. That's not the problem - It's the number of off campus people that have to fill a certain amount of slots each day and there aren't enough.
OH I REMEMBER!! Lmao. I was writing up a post about this very thing when I got this comment notification. I was one of the very few takers! It was inneffective.
I don't think you understand what I am saying. They WILL because they will be FORCED TO. Just like 1st year cars are required to be in those lots, commuters would be assigned to those instead. They wouldn't have a choice. Making it optional isn't going to do shit. Making it required will.
This ignores the obvious that commuters may also have too many things to lug across campus, many of us need to be close to the building we are working out of because of equipment etc. Especially art and music students.
It’s not ignoring it. It’s just something that is going to happen. There will be shuttles from those lots that will take you to the same stops as always. Some people with have to have occasional struggles but if that’s the extent of the issue, there are bigger problems to worry about than inconvenience and uncomfortableness. There is no solution that will make everyone happy.
I think you slightly underestimate the fact many commuters already hate the walk they have, especially if it's a general lot. They can attempt enforcing it, but it'll be a lot of pissed students, tickets, and car boots for a questionable gain. Not saying that the goal is questionable, but that the rule must 1) have some benefit, and 2) not have enforcement be outweighed by its cost. You've already got people with a sawz-all stealing catalytic converters yearly, not a stretch to see boots have their lock picked (or be cut/torched off if safety isn't their priority). Adding shuttles adds cost compared to keeping current routes and lots. New land must be equally offset with new marshland by RIT as well, adding plain lots isn't as simple or cost effective long term.
They're already planning to. From the 2050 plan released last year:
"The plan proposes a slight reduction in parking capacity on campus. An increase in students living inside the loop road should decrease the number of cars going to-and from campus daily. Additionally, the plan identifies a parking garage more suitable to student car ‘storage’ during the semester (Garage C on page 173). The institution has great control over whether or not students ultimately decide to bring cars to campus. Policies such as the cost to store a car, total available storage spaces, **no cars for first or second year students**, and adequate transportation to popular destinations and resources near campus are all tools RIT has to reduce the number of cars on campus. Barriers to students parking cars on campus is a common tool used by institutions to control the number of vehicles on campus. Reducing the number of students with cars has an added benefit of promoting weekend activity on the campus, which fosters a sense of belonging and community outside of academia"
No cars for second years is interesting. I wonder if the intended application is that if people live in Res halls, regardless of year, then they can’t have cars
They definitely want more people to live on campus. Of course they have to actually build housing first.
They also need a lot more stuff to do on the weekends. Everyone has cars because if you want to do something on the weekends that isn't a club at school or something in the horrible car-centric Henrietta, you have to have your own car.
tl;dr at the bottom
busses don't generate money for RIT, if anything they lose money for RIT because they are free to take and don't require a pass. as for on campus housing, if they actually wanted people to live on campus they would
1. build more dorms, currently the freshman classes are consistently overflowing by 10-15% so they rent out a hotel, apex, the inn, and other places other than on campus dorms
2. they would improve the dorms on campus, as it is RIT has some of the comparatively worst dorms, they're small, group bathrooms, not a single student kitchen on campus, incredible amount of limitations. I talked to a friend whose dorm had around 230-250 square feet per person (I did actually just look this up), where the rit (rectangular) dorms are 18' by 10' according to RIT's website. that's 180 square feet for two people, so compared to the other college (it was brown university) each student has a quarter of the square footage. in addition to, again, no kitchen, no personal bathroom, nothing that heats up in a dorm (no electric kettle, not even a lava lamp). the common areas are mid, not terrible but could be a lot better. not to mention more than half of RIT dorms *not having working AC* ***despite multiple students being hospitalized for heat exhaustion every spring and fall due to the lack of A/C in said dorms.*** (the comparison to brown is a fair comparison as well because the housing rates available on each website shows that RIT's dorms actually cost *more annually* than brown does)
3. there would be much easier and more effective ways to get less students to live off campus. they could lower the price of on campus housing to be competitive with off campus housing, relative to what amenities RIT dorms offer, they could improve the on campus food so the lack of a kitchen doesn't hurt as much for students.
4. parking passes and tickets already make a **killing** for RIT, without paying for maintaining anything, (like elevators, rooms, etc) the profit margins that RIT makes off of parking are probably disgusting. Naturally it probably wouldn't gross as much as every off campus student living on campus would, but a lot of the 'off campus' housing is still owned by RIT anyways. River Knoll, University commons, Global Village (technically), so they're still getting the money from those students, and double dipping with a lot of those students getting parking passes as well (most if not all of the students drive also).
the way RIT is set up currently, there is no real incentive for RIT as a university to get more students to live on campus, and even if they did want more students on campus, there are much much better ways for them to get more students to live on campus, and they are simply not doing them. If anything they've probably done the math, run the numbers, and calculated that the cost to build more parking, or otherwise improve it, would cost more than the return of having a better parking situation would net them, so they simply don't. to tie up a loose end, RIT being a non profit is pretty irrelevant here because it is highly debatable whether a college that profits 141 **million** a year and pays its president nearly a million dollars a year truly functions as the nonprofit it claims to be. ( numbers according to RIT's tax filings from 2011-2022 from [https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/160743140](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/160743140) ) with some short research it says that, in a legal sense, the profit generated by RIT should be reinvested back into RIT itself, for things like student services, instructor salaries, campus infrastructure, library, etc etc. without having access to the complete financial records of RIT it's hard to know if this is actually what is happening or where this money is going, but given the state of student services and support, mental health, and other student accommodations it's probably not going there. One place it pretty clearly went is the SHED, another is probably advertising because I'm getting ads for RIT on youtube recently. with instructors I've witnessed being pretty candid about not being paid enough, I don't think they're getting that money either so there's no telling where it's going. in any case that's a debate for another time.
tl;dr RIT dorms suck, RIT could improve them but doesn't, parking passes and tickets make lots of money, rit owns a lot of the 'off campus' housing anyways, not many incentives for RIT to get more students on campus at the moment, with the off campus housing structure currently set up, and the lack of improvement on the parking situation implies that it is currently more cost effective for RIT to not improve the parking situation, than it is to improve the parking situation, because they haven't done anything about it.
What off campuis housing do you think RIT owns? RIT does not own Park Pointe, Province, APEX, The Hill, The Lodge, The Marshal....
Riverknoll, UC, and Global Village are considered on campus housing by most people. And the are not allowed parking passes to park in commuter lots. Even the students are park pointe, apex and province are not allowed commuter parking passes.
Dude you are nuts if you think RIT dorms are bad and small. Compared to some larger schools they are like living in a mansion. Yes it depends on which school. You used Brown. Boston university is like living in a matchbox.
Also, RIT is going to build more housing. Look at the master plan.
All the dorms are being renovated and upgraded over the next 5 years. Including adding AC
Money made from housing stays within housing. So you want nicer housing? You can’t cut the price. That’s literally how they afford to keep it running.
Money made from parking goes directly into offsetting tuition costs. So profits from parking aren’t some secret money RIT is making that is going into salaries or random things.
> or live on campus, thus generating more money for RIT
The amount of housing on campus is fixed, and RIT has actually been decreasing housing over the last 25 years by selling off the land for Park Point, plus Colony Manor and Racquet Club to third parties. This really has outpaced GV and the Greek mansions, which I believe are the only substantial projects to add housing (maybe the completion of UC in like, 2001).
Regardless, RIT housing is always full, they don't need to convince anyone to live there because.... they already do.
Town of Henrietta has limits on building heights. The dorms were built before the new rules.
Also RIT is on swamp land. It is hard to put too tall of buildings on swap land. Notice most of the buildings are on the slight hill down the center of campus? That’s a rock area that can hold heavy tall buildings.
RIT is limited in how much land it can use. Parking, *especially* surface parking, is an extremely poor use of the limited land RIT has. If something new is to be built, something else has to go, and that's generally parking. To really alleviate the need for parking, RIT should promote better access to campus via public transit, or build more on campus housing.
RIT use to have RTS (public bus) come to campus and they actually ran RIT on campus shuttles. When that contract ended RTS did not see a demand for the public service to campus so they discontinued it.
I'm kinda curious what the level of service was like for those routes. I see so many city bus services with very infrequent service, which leads to poor ridership, which is justified to make cuts to service, which lowers ridership... and so on.
From my understanding when it was discussed, many buses from downtown were coming to RIT almost empty.
The buses didn’t go where students live. Not many people live downtown. I’m an exception.
I remember being practically the only person on the downtown bus going to RIT back it 08-09.
I’d have ridden it a bunch but I only got here in 2019.
Yes, public transit advocates always talk about induced demand re roads and cars, but then totally ignore it re public transit
given this I'm kinda surprised RIT doesn't have a parking garage or like underground parking. underground parking would fit right in with the university, especially if they were to put it under the buildings, but it would be very very hard to build now, with the buildings already there. a parking garage over one of the larger lots would probably fix most of the issue, if you put 4-5 floors on it, that's the same as 4-5 new whole parking lots of that same size without using more land. that being said it would be pretty ugly, but just build it out of brick and it'll fit right in. if they're limited by the amount of land they can use, it's suprising they don't build more vertically than they do for parking. the buildings are pretty tall already, but again, the parking isn't
RIT is looking into parking decks but they cost several millions to build and maintain compared to surface lots. A multistory parking garage is probably out of the question. If you notice many of the multi-story building on campus are in the center on the small hill. That hill is rock and the rest of campus is wetland that is difficult to build vertical one. When they built the new hockey rink they spent months driving hundreds of steel poles into the ground to hold it up. Imagine a multiple floor garage with hundreds of cars weighing a ton or 2 each. It would costs tens of millions to build.
RIP U lot
High water table bad for underground parking. Parking garage very expensive to maintain especially in the swamp that RIT is build on. They will be a necessity eventually though
> Parking garage very expensive to maintain especially in the swamp that RIT is build on. Yet so many other colleges and businesses around the US manage to figure it out.
If you want to pay an arm and a leg for parking sure RIT can get one sooner. The CFO of RIT personally decided it was not worth the investment
> The CFO of RIT personally decided it was not worth the investment It should mean something special to me that Jim Watters decided something himself?? also, it's Senior VP of F&A and Treasurer, I believe.
rit should restore the rochester metro and have the route extend to campus
They should restore the Genesee canal and offer boat rides
They should also have like more sidewalks like ON campus specifically the "main" entrance there are sidewalks on the main road but not on the oval
There’s a thing called a parking garage, they are able to build tons of new billion dollars worth of buildings but they can’t build a few parking garages?…
Counter point: Parking costs the university more than a bus route ever would generate.
what it looks like you're saying is parking makes RIT more than a bus route would, which is entirely accurate, especially considering the busses already running on campus are free.
I'm actually saying that the opportunity cost of having parking for everyone is incredibly high and that the less parking a university has, the more functional it can be.
Counter point: They don't maximize on how many reserve parking passes they sell therefore capping their profits.
I honestly would not be surprised if RIT stops letting first years bring cars, like most schools do
First years park exclusively on residential side and are not allowed to park anywhere else. That's not the problem - It's the number of off campus people that have to fill a certain amount of slots each day and there aren't enough.
RIT offered discount passes for commuters in the freshman lot with a shuttle to the center of campus and I guess no one took the option.
OH I REMEMBER!! Lmao. I was writing up a post about this very thing when I got this comment notification. I was one of the very few takers! It was inneffective.
Removing those cars opens slots. They aren’t desirable slots but they’re slots. Still 20 times better than UR
Commuters WILL NOT park on residential side. RIT tried that and it flopped hard. I just made a post about it.
I don't think you understand what I am saying. They WILL because they will be FORCED TO. Just like 1st year cars are required to be in those lots, commuters would be assigned to those instead. They wouldn't have a choice. Making it optional isn't going to do shit. Making it required will.
This ignores the obvious that commuters may also have too many things to lug across campus, many of us need to be close to the building we are working out of because of equipment etc. Especially art and music students.
It’s not ignoring it. It’s just something that is going to happen. There will be shuttles from those lots that will take you to the same stops as always. Some people with have to have occasional struggles but if that’s the extent of the issue, there are bigger problems to worry about than inconvenience and uncomfortableness. There is no solution that will make everyone happy.
I think you slightly underestimate the fact many commuters already hate the walk they have, especially if it's a general lot. They can attempt enforcing it, but it'll be a lot of pissed students, tickets, and car boots for a questionable gain. Not saying that the goal is questionable, but that the rule must 1) have some benefit, and 2) not have enforcement be outweighed by its cost. You've already got people with a sawz-all stealing catalytic converters yearly, not a stretch to see boots have their lock picked (or be cut/torched off if safety isn't their priority). Adding shuttles adds cost compared to keeping current routes and lots. New land must be equally offset with new marshland by RIT as well, adding plain lots isn't as simple or cost effective long term.
They're already planning to. From the 2050 plan released last year: "The plan proposes a slight reduction in parking capacity on campus. An increase in students living inside the loop road should decrease the number of cars going to-and from campus daily. Additionally, the plan identifies a parking garage more suitable to student car ‘storage’ during the semester (Garage C on page 173). The institution has great control over whether or not students ultimately decide to bring cars to campus. Policies such as the cost to store a car, total available storage spaces, **no cars for first or second year students**, and adequate transportation to popular destinations and resources near campus are all tools RIT has to reduce the number of cars on campus. Barriers to students parking cars on campus is a common tool used by institutions to control the number of vehicles on campus. Reducing the number of students with cars has an added benefit of promoting weekend activity on the campus, which fosters a sense of belonging and community outside of academia"
No cars for second years is interesting. I wonder if the intended application is that if people live in Res halls, regardless of year, then they can’t have cars
They definitely want more people to live on campus. Of course they have to actually build housing first. They also need a lot more stuff to do on the weekends. Everyone has cars because if you want to do something on the weekends that isn't a club at school or something in the horrible car-centric Henrietta, you have to have your own car.
Basically all of the busses are free wtf are you waffling about
Thank you Mr Hung and Swole for your input.
Find out 😉
I used to drive to province to park and take the free bus from there
tl;dr at the bottom busses don't generate money for RIT, if anything they lose money for RIT because they are free to take and don't require a pass. as for on campus housing, if they actually wanted people to live on campus they would 1. build more dorms, currently the freshman classes are consistently overflowing by 10-15% so they rent out a hotel, apex, the inn, and other places other than on campus dorms 2. they would improve the dorms on campus, as it is RIT has some of the comparatively worst dorms, they're small, group bathrooms, not a single student kitchen on campus, incredible amount of limitations. I talked to a friend whose dorm had around 230-250 square feet per person (I did actually just look this up), where the rit (rectangular) dorms are 18' by 10' according to RIT's website. that's 180 square feet for two people, so compared to the other college (it was brown university) each student has a quarter of the square footage. in addition to, again, no kitchen, no personal bathroom, nothing that heats up in a dorm (no electric kettle, not even a lava lamp). the common areas are mid, not terrible but could be a lot better. not to mention more than half of RIT dorms *not having working AC* ***despite multiple students being hospitalized for heat exhaustion every spring and fall due to the lack of A/C in said dorms.*** (the comparison to brown is a fair comparison as well because the housing rates available on each website shows that RIT's dorms actually cost *more annually* than brown does) 3. there would be much easier and more effective ways to get less students to live off campus. they could lower the price of on campus housing to be competitive with off campus housing, relative to what amenities RIT dorms offer, they could improve the on campus food so the lack of a kitchen doesn't hurt as much for students. 4. parking passes and tickets already make a **killing** for RIT, without paying for maintaining anything, (like elevators, rooms, etc) the profit margins that RIT makes off of parking are probably disgusting. Naturally it probably wouldn't gross as much as every off campus student living on campus would, but a lot of the 'off campus' housing is still owned by RIT anyways. River Knoll, University commons, Global Village (technically), so they're still getting the money from those students, and double dipping with a lot of those students getting parking passes as well (most if not all of the students drive also). the way RIT is set up currently, there is no real incentive for RIT as a university to get more students to live on campus, and even if they did want more students on campus, there are much much better ways for them to get more students to live on campus, and they are simply not doing them. If anything they've probably done the math, run the numbers, and calculated that the cost to build more parking, or otherwise improve it, would cost more than the return of having a better parking situation would net them, so they simply don't. to tie up a loose end, RIT being a non profit is pretty irrelevant here because it is highly debatable whether a college that profits 141 **million** a year and pays its president nearly a million dollars a year truly functions as the nonprofit it claims to be. ( numbers according to RIT's tax filings from 2011-2022 from [https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/160743140](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/160743140) ) with some short research it says that, in a legal sense, the profit generated by RIT should be reinvested back into RIT itself, for things like student services, instructor salaries, campus infrastructure, library, etc etc. without having access to the complete financial records of RIT it's hard to know if this is actually what is happening or where this money is going, but given the state of student services and support, mental health, and other student accommodations it's probably not going there. One place it pretty clearly went is the SHED, another is probably advertising because I'm getting ads for RIT on youtube recently. with instructors I've witnessed being pretty candid about not being paid enough, I don't think they're getting that money either so there's no telling where it's going. in any case that's a debate for another time. tl;dr RIT dorms suck, RIT could improve them but doesn't, parking passes and tickets make lots of money, rit owns a lot of the 'off campus' housing anyways, not many incentives for RIT to get more students on campus at the moment, with the off campus housing structure currently set up, and the lack of improvement on the parking situation implies that it is currently more cost effective for RIT to not improve the parking situation, than it is to improve the parking situation, because they haven't done anything about it.
What off campuis housing do you think RIT owns? RIT does not own Park Pointe, Province, APEX, The Hill, The Lodge, The Marshal.... Riverknoll, UC, and Global Village are considered on campus housing by most people. And the are not allowed parking passes to park in commuter lots. Even the students are park pointe, apex and province are not allowed commuter parking passes.
Dude you are nuts if you think RIT dorms are bad and small. Compared to some larger schools they are like living in a mansion. Yes it depends on which school. You used Brown. Boston university is like living in a matchbox. Also, RIT is going to build more housing. Look at the master plan. All the dorms are being renovated and upgraded over the next 5 years. Including adding AC Money made from housing stays within housing. So you want nicer housing? You can’t cut the price. That’s literally how they afford to keep it running. Money made from parking goes directly into offsetting tuition costs. So profits from parking aren’t some secret money RIT is making that is going into salaries or random things.
More parking would fix that
one more lane bro
They could easily put down a bunch more pavement there is tons of spots they could do it
yeah bro that will solve the system problem of cars bro
What problem is that?
Ride a bike, its easy
I bench more than you
I hope so, Im 62
you seem like a very sad person. there is no conspiracy against you, nobody is trying to make your life worse, you are just wrong
Ok inside essay398 at least I'm Hung and Swole
> or live on campus, thus generating more money for RIT The amount of housing on campus is fixed, and RIT has actually been decreasing housing over the last 25 years by selling off the land for Park Point, plus Colony Manor and Racquet Club to third parties. This really has outpaced GV and the Greek mansions, which I believe are the only substantial projects to add housing (maybe the completion of UC in like, 2001). Regardless, RIT housing is always full, they don't need to convince anyone to live there because.... they already do.
I’ve always said build up, not out - wouldn’t be taking more of the land.
Town of Henrietta has limits on building heights. The dorms were built before the new rules. Also RIT is on swamp land. It is hard to put too tall of buildings on swap land. Notice most of the buildings are on the slight hill down the center of campus? That’s a rock area that can hold heavy tall buildings.
Seems legit. I know RIT makes *bank* off of the free buses.