9,354. That was how many tickets the Department of Public Safety (DPS) issued during the 2009-2010 school year. The number is up by 16 percent from the previous academic year’s 7,851 tickets. In an eight month period at 30-days per month, DPS issued an average of 39 tickets per day, a shocking statistic to most of you, I would assume. I alone found it shocking, based upon an experience this past summer I had as an intern auditing small municipalities in New Jersey. I audited a few police departments and don’t recall any of them issuing more than 5,000 traffic tickets. I’m guessing there must be a lot of reckless vehicular behavior going on at our University.
What is the purpose of issuing so many tickets to faculty, staff, and students? Well, the obvious reason is this: Fairfield University is a pedestrian-friendly University, so it has strict driving and parking rules to ensure pedestrians are safe and not inconvenienced by drivers. Unfortunately, the only way people learn their lesson is when they are hit where it hurts the most: in their wallets.
So, the school isn’t concerned about the money, right? I mean, the school has DPS issue tickets for the benefit of its pedestrian community, but, as sweet as it is to earn a little revenue doing it, the collection of the traffic/parking fines has no subsequent goal behind it. The money goes into a University general fund, from which DPS receives none of it directly.
Yet, the dollar value of the tickets billed or collected for the academic school year of 2009-2010 was $132,889. Doesn’t this seem excessive? So, I got to thinking about what the money should go toward. A lot can be done with $100,000 and more. I believe the money should be reinvested in the same area it was taken from. Earn it from transportation, spend it on transportation.
I know what the students want: a new student parking lot or a parking garage. There is not much open land left on campus to meet this demand. The school would have to build up toward the sky. Realistically, we are not going to see an increase in student parking any time soon. After all, Fairfield is proud of the ranking it receives from the Princeton Review year after year for having one of the greenest campuses. If the sophomores get their parking privileges back, it invites another 500 cars on campus, which would be taking a step backwards in Fairfield’s environmental strategy.
Here is what I think should be done with the $132,899 earned from traffic/parking violations last school year. Give us back our campus shuttle. Fairfield owns two hybrid shuttles, so one can be used as the town shuttle and the other for campus. I estimate there will be no more than $50,000 in employee/labor expenses and under $10,000 in gas and maintenance expenses for two semesters.
Fairfield should also expand the town shuttle’s destinations, or, better yet, have two town shuttles—one that runs on Post Road from the Stop & Shop to Robeks, and another that runs on Blackrock Turnpike and the Trumbull Mall. Buy another hybrid shuttle. Use the money collected last year (minus the costs mentions above to reactivate the campus shuttle), and just wait until next year to begin the new shuttle routes when you can use the $100,000 collected from this year’s tickets to pay for the driver’s salary.
If the university is going to ask almost 2,000 freshmen and sophomores to live on campus without personal transportation, then they need to accommodate those students with adequate alternatives to get off campus. Why not fund the alternative solutions with the money collected from those students who can park on campus?
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