Police frustrated by wrecked parking gates
Multiple broken parking gates at a residence hall parking lot has Utah State University Campus Police looking at changes in parking procedures.
Since October 2003, parking gates at the R2 parking lot near Mountain View Tower, Bullen Hall and Richards Hall have been broken eight times, Sgt. Shane Sessions said.
“It’s become such a problem that we’ve decided to go ahead and leave the gates up for the rest of the year,” he said. “It makes it easier for anyone to just pull into the parking lot and park. Those residents, they could very well come home and not find a stall.”
Because there is no restricted access to the parking lot, parking attendants are now patrolling the area more, giving tickets to those parking without a permit.
The decision to leave the gates open was based on money, Sessions said.
“We just couldn’t afford to continue to repair it,” he said.
It costs about $75 to repair each broken gate.
Originally, the gate arms were made out of PVC pipe, but that was changed to aluminum, Sessions said, because it was thought that someone trying to break through the gate would not sacrifice their car by breaking through an aluminum gate.
“Apparently our idea didn’t exactly pan out,” he said. “Someone would either try and lift [the gate] up until the bolts broke or they pushed the gate forward enough until the bolts snapped.”
For safety reasons, parking gates are made to break off when a lot of pressure is applied, Sessions said. The gate arms and their bolts could be welded into the gate base, but then if an
emergency vehicle ever needed to get through, it would be unable to break past the gate without doing thousands of dollars worth of damage to the gate.
“There’s really no way to make them any more durable,” Sessions said.
While the first known broken gate at the R2 parking lot happened in October, it continued about once a week until Winter Break. After the break, the gates were not used until the first week of March because of heavy snowfall. Once the gates were put back into use, Sessions said, it took about two weeks before another broken gate was found.
“There’s no specific pattern,” he said. “To be able to say it’s happening every Monday at 8, if it were that easy, I’d just sit in the bushes and watch.”
A similar pattern of broken gates occurred last year in the R3 parking lot on the south side of campus, Sessions said. Officials decided to leave the gates open and increase ticketing to vehicles without parking permits, which was successful.
Sessions said he would like to keep the parking lot secured for residents of the surrounding halls so they could be assured a parking spot, but said it isn’t worth the expense to keep gates repaired.
Students with information about the gates being broken are encouraged to contact campus police at 797-1939. If an individual would like to remain anonymous they can call from a campus courtesy phone, Sessions said.
He said what has happened with the gates is a crime and is punishable.
“If you used your vehicle to do it, it’s a hit-and-run traffic accident. Failure to report a hit and run … would be a serious thing,” he said. “If you used your hand to lift it up to snap it off, it’s destroying university property.”
-str@cc.usu.edu