The availability of parking spots outweighed cost in the minds of commuter drivers, according to Thursday’s parking and transportation forums.

Seventy-one percent of more than 5,000 respondents to the Transportation Master Plan campus-wide survey prioritized the supply of parking spots, according to a presentation by Sasaki Associates.

Less than half listed price of parking as a top-two priority.

The forums summarized the results of the survey, which was pitched to students and employees, and looked ahead to the Master Plan, UK’s plan for campus development.

The campus transportation survey opened at the beginning of March. It asked students, faculty and staff to detail their time spent on campus, indicate the amount of time they thought appropriate for travel, and prioritize their parking and transportation needs.

“Our goal is to have a system that serves our community to the best of our ability — and it’s more than just parking, we’re talking about all aspects of our transportation,” said Eric Monday, UK’s executive vice president of finance and administration.

Andrew McClurg, a senior associate at Sasaki Associates, said Monday’s office also considered feedback submitted via email.

“Let’s keep the feedback going,” Monday said. “We can only create a great transportation master plan with a lot of feedback from our community, our partners, people in and around Lexington.”

The meeting focused on future goals for parking and transit. McClurg listed items like 20-minute walks from campus to commuter transportation and access for students with disabilities as points to work on in coming years.

“We understand that the campus master plan is really the guiding document for the development of the campus, and so everything we do here is in that context,” McClurg said. “We hope it’s consistent with some of the goals and priorities that were set there.”

There was no discussion of the potential closure of Rose Street, any further activity on South Limestone or crossing Woodland Avenue from the Woodland Glen residence halls.

“Those traffic operations issues really have to be considered in the context of these policy decisions about parking and transit that we’re still working on,” McClurg said. “So traffic operations really kind of falls out of our understanding of how traffic needs to move around campus.”

McClurg said the survey’s free-response questions received a variety of answers, most of which concerned safety, distance traveling from campus to bus and shuttle stops, the price of parking and access to disability parking.

At the beginning of the Fall 2014 semester, Lance Broeking, UK’s director of parking and transportation, told the Kentucky Kernel that campus lost 21 handicapped parking spaces.

Some handicap spots were added to parking structures, Broeking said.

STAFF REPORT