A parking ramp incident angered fans leaving the University of Minnesota’s Oak Street Parking Ramp following Wednesday afternoon’s Gopher-Michigan State basketball game at Williams Arena. When customers entered the ramp for the 11 a.m. game there were no parking attendants to pay. Instead, fans had to pay following the game, causing long delays in exiting the ramp.
About 2:15 p.m., more than one hour after the game, vehicles were bumper-to-bumper from the ground level pay booths to the fourth floor. A frustrated customer cancelled a 3 p.m. dental appointment and instead headed for a nearby restaurant for a late lunch.
Good news. By 3:15 p.m. there was no backup of cars on the fourth level! But there was parking ramp gridlock starting on level three.
Upon arriving at the pay booth I questioned the common sense of paying for the parking. The University could have waived all those cars through the exits at no charge, thereby treating their basketball customers with the gratitude they deserve for putting up with the inconvenience.
Instead the parking attendant announced he was charging the usual event parking rate of $8. Give the young man credit, though, for being courteous and willing to offer an explanation for the problem.
Let me give his answer a bit of dramatic pause before sharing it with you. It was an explanation only a bureaucrat could love. “The University can’t charge for event parking in the morning,” the attendant said.
So if events start in the morning, then no one will take parking money from customers entering the ramps, thereby causing long delays in the afternoon. The possible rationale for this policy is that the University doesn’t want to confuse event parkers with hourly customers.
An empathetic athletic department spokesman, who emphasized his department has no control over parking at the University, told Sports Headliners on Saturday that the policy is specific to Monday through Friday parking, not weekends. I guess that’s of some comfort to anyone who dares to park at the Oak Street Ramp next fall for morning football games at TCF Bank Stadium. But all those customers last Wednesday who might have missed dental appointments, or picking up friends at the airport, or arriving home on time to relieve anxious baby sitters will long remember the frustration and inconvenience of December 31, 2008.