With the rise of mopeds on campus over the last three years from a few dozen to nearly 900, UW-Madison Transportation Services has decided to require every moped owner to purchase a $55 parking permit, beginning next semester.
In the past, we had never really managed mopeds,\ UW-Madison Transportation Administrator Gordon Graham said. ""They just kind of appeared in the space of a couple or three years.""
After approval last month from the Campus Transportation Committee, these mandatory sticker permits will go into effect Sept. 1.
They will be available on the Transportation Services website starting Aug. 1, and students will be able to park anywhere on campus with them.
""We built something in the neighborhood of $60,000 worth of moped parking facilities. In order to recover some of that cost ... we thought that a ?permit would be reasonable,"" Graham said.
Requirement of permits will be part of the large effort by Transportation Services to educate moped users about safe practices on the road.
Lance Lunsway, director of UW-Madison Transportation Services, said that part of the purpose of these permits is to facilitate a safe compromise between pedestrians, bikers, cars and moped drivers who share street space.
""We know that this is one form of transportation that students and faculty staff both are using, so how ?do we incorporate it into the bigger picture of transportation versus trying to eliminate it or segregate it?"" Lunsway said.
Last fall, as part of their education campaign, Transportation Services distributed 5,600 brochures detailing moped safety to moped drivers around campus. The number of citations was extremely low first semester as well, because the Transportation staff was more concerned with correct observance of moped rules than making students pay money.
""We had bike ambassadors and transportation staff out handing out brochures and talking to moped owners for three months, and then started writing citations,"" Graham said.
Also beginning Aug. 1 will be a new bus route called the Park Street Circulator, which aims to help moped drivers who want to stay parked in one spot all day.
UW-Madison sophomore Katie Mathews said she believes the permit requirement is just another way for the University to take students' money, and the only effect it will have is to change people's minds about buying mopeds in the first place.
""I think monitoring them is just going to piss people off,"" she said. ""It's not going to make anybody drive better.""\
