By NOEL MURPHY
PARKING strife at Deakin University is under staff attack as the new year’s courses begin.
Staff have slammed $450 annual fees that fail to guarantee parking spaces as well as inadequate shuttle bus seats between the Waurn Ponds campus and Geelong.
National Tertiary Education Union organiser Gary Ryan said university’s executives were ignoring a campaign for more parking as construction projects stole existing spaces.
“We’ve pointed out all the problems and they’ve said it’s too expensive to fix but I know they’ve got hundreds of millions in cash reserves,” Mr Ryan said.
“We’ll take it up to them again but we just don’t see any attitude change by senior executives who all have reserved parks.”
Mr Ryan said staff were arriving up to an hour early to secure a space.
“I’ve also heard that when new students find out how much it costs to park they study online and don’t come to campus because it’s too expensive.”
Staff told the Independent that work had begun on a new engineering department in Waurn Ponds campus’s main car park.
“The shuttle buses don’t have enough seats when you need them, car pooling is difficult and riding your bike up that Barrabool Road hill is harder.”
Deakin acknowledged problems at peak periods but said predicting daily demand accurately was “not possible”.
Deakin was spending millions of dollars tackling the problems, said sustainable enterprise manager Karly Lovell.
“A permit cannot guarantee a bay will be available. However, there’s a marked drop in demand for parking once students settle in to the new year,” she said.
Ms Lovell said Deakin had invested $2.3 million on providing parking alternatives, including inter-campus and park-and-ride bus services.
Deakin had also introduced a 64-passenger “Cube Bus” to replace one of its 24-seat inter-campus buses and recently opened a “Transit Hub” at Waurn Ponds to cater for bus, bike and “active transport users”.
