MTSU offers drive thru parking permits this fall

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Got a Moore County student headed to MTSU this fall? Here’s a little good news. MTSU’s Office of Parking and Transportation Services plans to help students cut stress and check a critical item off their fall 2022 back-to-school lists by offering more opportunities to get their campus parking permits until classes begin Monday, Aug. 22.  
 
On August 9-19, the MTSU parking office will be open 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays to help both commuter and resident students avoid the usual start-of-classes wait lines. 
 
Students living on campus can choose to get their parking permits during this fall’s move-in days August 17-21, an event that includes all the housing check-in points in a single location: the Champion Way Parking Garage. Both commuter and resident students can get permits August 22-24 via drive-thru at the parking office on City View Drive. The drive-thru will operate on August 22 from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., August 23 from 7:30 a.m. to noon, and Wednesday, August 24 from 7:30 to 10 a.m.
 
On August 22-25, the office’s inside operating hours also will be extended to 6 p.m. to help students, faculty and staff who need more help registering their vehicles. 
 
“We find that our students aren’t all here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., so extending (the hours) in the evening and days of the week, I think, helps us hit all our student body population,” said Tracy Read, director of the Office of Parking and Transportation Services. 
 
Parking and Transportation Services first offered drive-thru permit pickup in August 2020 to keep motorists and employees apart and safer during the pandemic. The practice continued after the department moved into its City View Drive building in January 2021. 
 
“I complained about … all the negative things that came out of the pandemic, but for our work purposes, I believe it did help us find a better way to distribute (parking) permits,” Read said, “Especially since we moved, and this new building can’t hold as many human beings as our old building could. We were saying, ‘Uh, what will we do when we get there?’ but the pandemic answered that question for us.” 
 
Counting cars on campus 
 
As the university has returned to in-person classes and events while still expanding its online and distance-learning courses, the number of commuter-student permits has continued to decline slightly each year. Permits for students living on campus dipped proportionately when rooms changed to single-occupancy status in 2020 and 2021, but the return to regular housing operations means those permit totals “have maintained and are about back where they were pre-pandemic,” Read said.  
 
MTSU issued 8,827 student parking permits for academic year 2021-22, not including the permits that renew each semester.  Faculty and staff permits added another 3,447 to the total number of vehicles registered to park on campus last year, giving Parking and Transportation staffers at least 12,274 placards to process for campus drivers. MTSU’s fall 2021 enrollment was 20,857 full and part-time students, and the university had 2,193 full-time employees, according to the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Planning and Research.  
 
Students will again need their university ID and “M number,” or MTSU ID number, and proof of paid tuition, as well as the license plate number of the vehicle they’ll be driving on campus, to get their new permits. PDFs with details and maps of the move-in day and drive-thru plans are available at the “Fall 2022 Student Permit Information” link at https://mtsu.edu/parking
 
Parking is included in the Student Program Services Fee each student pays according to their enrolled course hours each semester. That total also includes technology access, postal service, health services and facilities fees. Students, faculty and staff with state-issued placards or plates for handicapped-accessible parking must visit the Parking and Transportation Services office for a fall 2022 MTSU parking permit.  
 
For more information about parking at MTSU, visit MTSU’s website or email [email protected] 
 
The MTSU Parking and Transportation offices are located at 215 City View Drive between East Main Street and Alumni Drive. MTSU begins its 2022-23 academic year on August 22 with the fall 2022 semester. For information about MTSU anytime, visit their website. •

{The Lynchburg Times is an independently-owned, community newspaper located in Lynchburg, Tennessee the home of The Jack Daniel Distillery. We focus on public service, non-partisan, rural journalism. We cover the Metro Moore County government, local tourism, Moore County schools, high school sports, Motlow State Community College, as well as whiskey industry news and regional and state stories that affect our readers.}