Antony Maalouf, Student Representative for the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), met with the Associate Students Inc. at their weekly board meeting to provide updates from the recent TAC meeting regarding the planning process of Parking Structure V.

Parking Structure V is set to hold about eighteen hundred student and faculty parking spaces, which is equivalent to parking structure two. However, the original plan was to provide more parking for students.

“New plans were brought up, and we were hit with three reasons why it would be burdensome to have more than eighteen hundred parking space, environmental impact, master plan constraints and bond financing changes,” Maalouf said.

Maalouf said the issue with the amount of parking spaces is that the spaces in Parking Lot one and two are going to expand; due to the space confines and with the expansion, some parking spaces will be lost.

“If Parking Structure V is built with eighteen hundred spaces that it is currently being planned for, there will be zero net gain for students. It will be strictly to make up for the parking spaces lost from the expansion of the others,” Maalouf said.

Diana Vega, Director of Engineering and Computer Science, spoke on behalf of UTAPs and explained the reasoning behind the lack of parking spaces.

“One of the reasons that they mention of not having too many parking is because they want students to use other sources of transportation to come to campus to reduce traffic like car pooling, biking or public transportation,” Vega said.

Although Vega and a few members of the board said the school has been promoting alternative transportation initiative, Maalouf said it should be up to the students to decide.

“If it’s the school’s master plan for alternative transportation, we should let the student decide and not force them by not having parking,” Maalouf said.

The situation is still developing, with more information to be announced at upcoming meetings.

“Thank you much for being here today and keeping us updated on the situation. I am planning on meeting with Tony Locus, and I will reiterate all of the feedback you’ve given me,” ASI President Melissa Bardo said.

Additionally, the Board also passed five items to their consent calendar and presented their monthly directors reports.