rollnggrnade

Great questions and input. The Parking Task Force is comprised of students and employees (in fact, if you wanted to get involved - you could stop by the Student Life office and inquire about it). I'll pass along your concerns about promoting alternative modes of transportation. Unfortunately it's always a challenge to get information out to students given how much competition there is for everyone's attention - especially the first few weeks of school. I do know of one map of the DASH routes that the college has on its site here, for what it's worth. It actually used to be very difficult to get students interested in the DASH or RAPID options; we had employees going around to all of the cars parked in gridlock with literature - but some students were (and are) perfectly content to sit in their cars burning gas while they do their homework (no lie). In that way, high gas prices have had a positive impact in reducing the number of students who can afford to be wasteful like that. Unfortunately with all of the construction, there aren't many ways to avoid the traffic (and even the routes that are available are frequently subject to change as heavy equipment and supply deliveries block the roads, or as the city adds new construction projects). It's typically worst the first couple of weeks of school - but then people figure out alternate ways to get to campus. There are updates and information available on the site though: www.grcc.edu/construction The college agrees with you on bicycle parking; in fact we just added a bunch more (and hopefully we'll continue to add more and more). You can find a list of the bike rack locations at www.grcc.edu/bike - I'll suggest that they put together a map showing the bike locations.

I agree; I was somewhat surprised to see how progressive the thinking has been. My apologies for not picking up on the sarcasm.

All good suggestions - and GRCC is exploring all of them (I'm on the parking task force at the college). The college has raised parking fees in recent years including changing how it assesses students for parking (though given the relative economic disadvantage GRCC students tend to be at, the college tries to minimize the economic hardship on them) The college subsidizes mass transit for students in the form of the DASH shuttle system The college just joined up with an online carpool application called "Greenride" that allows people to set up profile (anonymously if they wish, to protect their private information) and find potential carpoolers in proximity to them by searching based on location, dates, times, and other features. Several other local companies and schools are either signed up or are in the process of signing up so that the database of people to draw from will continue to grow. It just started this semester and there are already nearly 550 people signed up: www.grcc.edu/greenride GRCC employees are now charged a fee to park on campus (which didn't used to be the case a few years ago) The environmental impact factors prominently into the college's planning and the college is factoring it into the long-term plan for the campus - because eventually it's likely one of the college's parking ramps will reach the end of its life soon (and it's been discussed that instead of building a new one, the college use the resources to subsidize greener mass transit options) The college does have research data on when and where students come from which it is studying; that has led to the college looking into helping carpooling on the west side of Kent County because there is a sizeable population that commutes from Ottawa County during a common time/period during the week. The college is also working with the RAPID on other mass transit options (like a proposed spur on the southwest side of the city). It's great to see that other folks in the community are thinking about these things.

GRCC does subsidize student participation in the Rapid transit system (specifically the DASH shuttle system) and the college has been regularly maxing out its participation and has been looking for other options; for example it explored setting up an alternate DASH site in the Woodland Mall parking lots, and using the Tassell M-TEC on the southeast side as another DASH location. Unfortunately mass transit options have been affected lately by the combination of the Spectrum construction and the City's inability to finish the construction on Lyon street on time (so the bus stops have been diverted to alternate locations until later this month).

The 28,000 figure includes all the credit and non-credit students for the entire year; so in that number are all of the students served at the outlying campuses and other regional centers (like the local public schools that GRCC offers classes in after hours), online students, and people who attend one-time training seminars that the college provides. The actual for-credit enrollment is over 15,000 per semester and of that number, only around 3,000-4,000 students are actually on campus during any given day.

Given that Kent County voted down GRCC's two millage requests - it's unlikely they have the money to buy up enough Heritage Hill real estate to build and then maintain another parking ramp. That is, of course, assuming they could even get approval/permits to plunk an ugly parking ramp down in the middle of a residential neighborhood (which is highly unlikely).