Parking Fees Will Soar; Harvard Adds to Spaces

The University is planning a five-year program to expand its parking facilities by nearly 50 per cent-an increase which will be paid for by much higher parking fees levied on students and Faculty alike.

According to the program made public today, Harvard will build 2013 additional parking spaces in a series of multi-level, above-ground garages scattered around the University. The new spaces will bring the University's total parking capacity to 6352 spaces by 1975.

The cost of financing and maintaining these spaces will rise from $570,000 in 1970-71 to $1.4 million in 1974-75. Parking fees will be increased each year to keep up with the higher costs. For the academic year 1970-71, a resident student will pay $150-as compared to $40 this year-to park his car in a University lot. Tentative plans call for this fee to rise to $245 for the academic year 1974-75.

Faculty members-who now park their cars without charge-will pay the same fees as students. A commuting Faculty member or student will, for example, pay $90 during the academic year 1970-71 and $150 during 1974-75 to park during the day within a lot.

Both the Council of Deans and the Corporation have approved the general outline of the program, although some details of it may subsequently be altered. The program was prepared by an ad hoc committee composed of representatives of each Harvard faculty except the Medical School, whose parking problems are handled separately.

The 2000-odd parking spaces of the program represent the minimum Harvard must build during the next five years to comply with local zoning codes' parking requirements for buildings the University plans to construct during that period.

"This is a conservative program.... If additional demand is generated and there is a real willingness to pay for more parking, it is quite possible thatwe would build beyond this program," University Planning Officer Harold L. Geyette said yesterday.

Paying for the additional parking spaces by increases in fees represents a major change in University policy. In the past, when a division of Harvard constructed a new building, the parking spaces legally required for that building were financed out of the division's budget. The budget also paid the expenses of maintaining Faculty members' parking spaces.

The committee's report said that the new policy would:

Free Faculty budgets from the burden of paying for parking and thus increase the money available for other uses-salaries, scholarships. etc.

Make re-allocating parking spaces easier, since a department would no longer have a vested interest in the parking spaces it paid for.

Remove the necessity of pro-rating maintenance charges on parking facilities shared by two or more departments.

While parking fees are new to most Harvard Faculty members, those in the Medical School area have been paying such charges for certain parking lost for tow years. According to a survey conducted by the Planning Office, at least three East Coast universities-Yale. Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania-now require Faculty and students to pay similar fees.

Under current plans, the number of parking permits issued to Faculty members will be somewhat decreased next year, in order to assure that those Faculty who pay to park in a lot will find space there. With a $10 permit, Faculty members without general permits will be able to park in some 200 metered parking spaces.

The first step in the building program-the new Everett St. Garage with a 368-space capacity-opened less than a month ago. As projected, the program would continue as follows:

1970-71-Expansion of the Business School parking lots by 200 spaces.

1971-72-Construction of a 500-car parking garage across from the Broadway Supermarket.

1972-73-Construction of a 480-car garage at the new John F. Kennedy School of Government (in the present MBTA yards).

1974-75-Construction of a 500-car garage in the vicinity of undergraduate dormitories.

"We've got a lot of new parking that has to be built and it can only be built in multi-level garages. We're out of ongrade space." Goyette said of the garage plans.

The program also envisions that a new central Parking Office will gradually assume many of the functions of granting permits and enforcing parking policies which 36 separate University departments now share. James T. Sullivan 36, a 20-year veteran of the FBI and former manager of the Hasty Pudding Club, has been named to head the office as Harvard's first Parking Manager.