York parking
OK, I'm going to continue with my Schulich experience.
Parking. As I've come to expect from my university experiences, parking on campus is usually not only a hassle, but also an expensive hassle... Doesn't usually seemed justified to me, but what do I know?
In the welcome package that I received during my advising session I found a form that I had to fill out and mail in to get parking privileges. It had list of all the lots available and the cost to park in these lots. Now, I have to mention that at York there are 2 ways to classify the parking structures. There are parking lots and parkades (i.e. multilevel parking, that's mostly covered). These, in turn are divided into reserved and non-reserved. Sounds good for now, right? So you can get a parking permit for a reserved lot (you'll only pay once per semester/school year/year [depending on how long you need the permit for]) or pay as you go for an un-reserved lot. The permit will allow you to park on a specific lot/parkade at any time during the period that the permit is valid (i.e. all day every day for a certain number of months).
Back to my story. I filled out the necessary information back in June (figured that I'll leave for vacation, and I'll have my permit when I get back in July). I signed up 2 cars - my old Mazda (that still has NJ plates on it), and Vovka's Volvo (just in case something happens to my car, and I have to use his). We left for vacation. Come back, and there's a message on the phone telling me that they cannot register the car with the NJ plates, and that i need to send them my insurance information for the car. I'm thinking to myself "why in the world would they need insurance for the Mazda and not for the Volvo?" I mean, I could be driving an car with Ontario plates and not have insurance, right?
So, I call them back this week to sort everything out. Speak to a girl who asks me to fax in my registration (apparently they lost it or threw it out or something...). So after trying to fax in front & back of this tiny card (with the office copier not working), I hope that I'd get a call or some kind of confirmation. Nope... oh well. So I called back today. Only waited on hold for about 7 minutes, not bad :) Speak to some lady who does not want to look on my account to tell me if everything's ok. She takes my number and says that she'll call me back if there's a problem, and won't call me if there's no problem. Fine, I ask her when can I expect a call (so I can know that if I don't get a call by that time, there's no problem). She didn't get it. So after I repeated it twice, she finally understood, and said that she'll call within 7!!! days. Thankfully, she called back within half an hour. Of course there was a problem. I now have 2 Ontario plates on my record. We don't have 2 Ontario plates in my household... So I tell her that one of them must be a NJ car that's just listed as an Ontario car. Thankfully, she fixed everything and called me back to confirm. Woo-hoo! So now I am a proud owner of a parking permit for Lot 1 on York U. campus.
Now, to explain a bit more about how parking works. The York campus isn't considered too small by people over here, and there are quite a few parking lots/parkades on it. I'd guess that more than half of them are reserved, and those that aren't are generally on the outskirts of the campus. Oh, did I mention that the university is located in probably one of the, how shall I put it, worst areas of the city? So I, personally, wouldn't want to be walking there at night from the outskirts of the campus. But I'm lucky, Lot 1 is right next to the Schulich building.
However, I figured that I would want to take advantage of the $10/year gym membership while I'm in school. The gym, however, is on a diagonal across campus from the Schulich building. So now I have a choice - I can either park for free (well, almost, I already paid over $700 for the 8 months' parking on Lot 1, and may wind up paying more if a spot becomes available in Parking Structure 3 - a new parkade they're building next to the new building) and then walk all the way across campus (it's fine now, but what about -20C with windchill weather??) or I can pay for parking (probably about $2/hour) for a lot closer to the gym, and then still walk ('cause as I mentioned, the "pay as you go" unreserved lots are not very close to any buildings [except for one "pay as you go" parkade]). Nice choice, eh?
I'm now fondly thinking of Rutgers parking - where you got a permit for a certain type of lot, and there were a few of them around the campus(es), so you could park in more than one place. Wouldn't it make sense for them to do something like this at York?
Parking. As I've come to expect from my university experiences, parking on campus is usually not only a hassle, but also an expensive hassle... Doesn't usually seemed justified to me, but what do I know?
In the welcome package that I received during my advising session I found a form that I had to fill out and mail in to get parking privileges. It had list of all the lots available and the cost to park in these lots. Now, I have to mention that at York there are 2 ways to classify the parking structures. There are parking lots and parkades (i.e. multilevel parking, that's mostly covered). These, in turn are divided into reserved and non-reserved. Sounds good for now, right? So you can get a parking permit for a reserved lot (you'll only pay once per semester/school year/year [depending on how long you need the permit for]) or pay as you go for an un-reserved lot. The permit will allow you to park on a specific lot/parkade at any time during the period that the permit is valid (i.e. all day every day for a certain number of months).
Back to my story. I filled out the necessary information back in June (figured that I'll leave for vacation, and I'll have my permit when I get back in July). I signed up 2 cars - my old Mazda (that still has NJ plates on it), and Vovka's Volvo (just in case something happens to my car, and I have to use his). We left for vacation. Come back, and there's a message on the phone telling me that they cannot register the car with the NJ plates, and that i need to send them my insurance information for the car. I'm thinking to myself "why in the world would they need insurance for the Mazda and not for the Volvo?" I mean, I could be driving an car with Ontario plates and not have insurance, right?
So, I call them back this week to sort everything out. Speak to a girl who asks me to fax in my registration (apparently they lost it or threw it out or something...). So after trying to fax in front & back of this tiny card (with the office copier not working), I hope that I'd get a call or some kind of confirmation. Nope... oh well. So I called back today. Only waited on hold for about 7 minutes, not bad :) Speak to some lady who does not want to look on my account to tell me if everything's ok. She takes my number and says that she'll call me back if there's a problem, and won't call me if there's no problem. Fine, I ask her when can I expect a call (so I can know that if I don't get a call by that time, there's no problem). She didn't get it. So after I repeated it twice, she finally understood, and said that she'll call within 7!!! days. Thankfully, she called back within half an hour. Of course there was a problem. I now have 2 Ontario plates on my record. We don't have 2 Ontario plates in my household... So I tell her that one of them must be a NJ car that's just listed as an Ontario car. Thankfully, she fixed everything and called me back to confirm. Woo-hoo! So now I am a proud owner of a parking permit for Lot 1 on York U. campus.
Now, to explain a bit more about how parking works. The York campus isn't considered too small by people over here, and there are quite a few parking lots/parkades on it. I'd guess that more than half of them are reserved, and those that aren't are generally on the outskirts of the campus. Oh, did I mention that the university is located in probably one of the, how shall I put it, worst areas of the city? So I, personally, wouldn't want to be walking there at night from the outskirts of the campus. But I'm lucky, Lot 1 is right next to the Schulich building.
However, I figured that I would want to take advantage of the $10/year gym membership while I'm in school. The gym, however, is on a diagonal across campus from the Schulich building. So now I have a choice - I can either park for free (well, almost, I already paid over $700 for the 8 months' parking on Lot 1, and may wind up paying more if a spot becomes available in Parking Structure 3 - a new parkade they're building next to the new building) and then walk all the way across campus (it's fine now, but what about -20C with windchill weather??) or I can pay for parking (probably about $2/hour) for a lot closer to the gym, and then still walk ('cause as I mentioned, the "pay as you go" unreserved lots are not very close to any buildings [except for one "pay as you go" parkade]). Nice choice, eh?
I'm now fondly thinking of Rutgers parking - where you got a permit for a certain type of lot, and there were a few of them around the campus(es), so you could park in more than one place. Wouldn't it make sense for them to do something like this at York?