Okay, so if I haven’t established already I am a student down at Metro State College. I should be done in May with a communication degree! Woo Hoo! I think the thing that frustrates me most about being a student at metro is paying for parking. I mean come on, I pay enough to go to school there, don’t you think you could cut students a break and give us free parking. In fact this year they raised all the parking prices. There is one lot that is $1.75, but only has about 25 spaces in it so it fills up pretty fast and the cheapest after that is $3. I think that is a little ridiculous. I have class 4 times a week so I am going to at least spend about $12 a week on parking. That is about $50 a month. To me it feels like a wast of money.
My solution to not wanting to pay is riding the bus. I really actually enjoy the bus ride and it so nice to sit back and let the bus drive deal with the traffic as I read my text book or listen to my i-pod. However, lately riding the bus hasn’t been as easy as it once was. I catch the 120x at the park-n-ride on 120th & Huron. This semester my classes are later in the day so by the time I get to the parking lot all the parking spaces are full. There was a time when you could park along the curb, but they have put up fire lane signs so you are no longer aloud to park there. The solution to this was to park in the Cracker Barrel parking lot that is next to the RTD parking lot. Well apparently Cracker Barrel does not like that because they too have put up no RTD parking signs.
I do understand the reasoning for the signs and it really was never that big of deal until last Wed. I needed to catch the 10:43 bus to make it down to campus for my 11:30 class. I arrived to the park-n-ride parking lot at 10:20 knowing that I would have to drive around to find a spot. I drove around the whole parking lot and there was not one single spot open. Frustrated and a little flustered because my bus had arrived and it was almost 10:43 I zoomed over to the Cracker Barrel parking lot to see if there might be somewhere to park. I decided to risk it and park along the curb next to the Craker Barrel parking lot (I know that isn’t bright thinking now, I wanted free parking so bad I risked getting a $50 ticket instead of paying $3 to park down town) Well as I was leaving my car, Cracker Barrel Manager comes out and says, “Excuse me”
“Yes”, I said.
“Are you going to take the bus”?
“Yes”.
“Well then I’m sorry, but you can’t park there”.
“okay I said sorry about that, I will move my car”.
Of course by this time I had missed the bus and only had a little over a half hour to get to my class and I had to drive down to campus. On my way I realized that I didn’t have any cash therefore no money for parking. I pulled over to the side of the road and emptied out all of my change from my car, trunk, purse, and back pack. Miraculously I did find $3 worth of change, but $.75 of it was in pennies. The parking attended wasn’t too thrilled with all the change she had to count.
I write all of this to tell you that I am a little frustrated with the seflishness of Cracker Barrel. See they have a very big parking lot and lets face it, are they really going to have that many people come to eat? No. They can spare a few spaces for the overflow of the RTD parking lot. I mean come on work with us students here. We are trying to better ourselves, so we can better the world and you won’t even let us use a parking space?
I know that I may sound a little ridiculous in this rant, but the fact of the matter is paying for parking is annoying, but sometimes you just have to deal with it. I have decided to deal with it by sharing this with all of you, but in the end sometimes I still have to suck it up and pay. Life is just tough sometimes. But hey at least when I need to I can usually afford to pay to park my car and I have a car to park. See it is when I realize things like that, that this rant really seems silly. But it does feel good to get it all out there sometimes. : )
Delima?…. Dilemma?…
I know exactly how you feel. They should make a parking garage or something on 120th. I usually park all the way on the other side of 120th and have to cross the busy street.
Anneke
I sympathize with you, and it seems like all the businesses are mounting a defense. I parked at Motel 8 and got a towing notice for the next time I parked there, do you really think Motel 8 gets that much business? It can be very frustrating and I plan on submitting a complaint to RTD!
Since I manage real estate for a large retailer, I absolutely agree with Cracker Barrel (CB). The real issue is not how many spaces they have available, the issue really relates to liability and the cost of maintaining/repairing/replacing the parking lot.
If you are a CB customer and you are hurt in their parking lot, they are liable for your medical bills. If you are an RTD customer, however you park in the CB lot and are hurt in the CB lot, who do you think pays? CB, not RTD…unless of course CB sues RTD, which is not worth the expense.
Then there is the issue of maintaining the lot. The more cars that drive on the lot, the more maintenance has to be done. RTD is not helping to pay to maintain the CB lot, and CB is not benefitting from the RTD customers parking in its lot, so they don’t want RTD customers in the lot.
The same goes for the Motel, or any other business in the area.
While I also use that park-n-ride, and deal with the same frustrations, I think Saabthing is onto something when he says he will complain to RTD. That is who needs to solve the problem for their customers, not CB.
I am with you on your rant. Having been a student, paying for parking was the last twist of the knife. I got to the same Pnr Monday morning after getting delayed at home – still during rush hour – to find no spaces left just after 8:30a.m. I drove down to the Thornton Pnr, but decided that since I’d driven half way already that I’d just drive on downtown. I agree, RTD is the ulimate shoulder to put pressure on, unfortunately you’ll be a grandma before they expand the parking lot!
I worked at Cracker Barrel and my truck broke down in the parking lot right out front. I didn’t think I had to tell anyone that I was leaving my little truck there overnight. Anyway, I go back the next evening with a fuel filter, that’s all it needed, and my fucking truck had been towed. They towed my truck in less than 24 hours. I threw a fit and got fired. Another thing you should know about Cracker Barrel. It’s filthy. When I worked there, I had to pick dried eggs and gravy off almost every cup. New servers would rewash them but it eventually became pointless. We just got to the point of only scraping off the crud off if the customer was drinking water because then they would see it. All the employees drink out of clear baggies because their dishes are so dirty. They also searched our pockets after every shift. I don’t work there anymore however I found this http://twitter.com/ewCrackerBarrel in case you want to know about eating there. For health and safety reasons, never eat at Cracker Barrel. And never ever leave your vehicle there overnight. They take the tag # and if it’s there in the morning, they call the tow company.