Auburn University Parking Services has been hard at work during the first months of the summer semester. They have added 14 electric car charging stations to four locations across campus.
There are four stations on the first level of the Stadium parking deck, four on the first level of the South Donahue parking deck near the practice fields, four on the second level of the South Quad parking deck near the parking services office and two in the resident overflow parking lot near the band practice field.
“We looked at where can we take four spaces without impacting parking,” said Don Andrae, director of parking services.
To use a charging station, the user’s vehicle must be registered with parking services. Anyone whose vehicle is registered can use a charging station regardless of what zone their parking pass is for.
For example, a student with a C-zone parking pass and an electric vehicle could park in the Stadium parking deck, a B-zone and visitor parking deck, for four hours to charge their vehicle. After four hours, the student would then need to move their vehicle to their assigned zone.
The car must be charging while it is parked in a charging station spot. The car can stay for up to four hours at a time.
“You come in in the morning, you park it and you charge it,” Andrae said. “You come back out at lunch and you can move it. Or you come back after lunch and you park it. Then you come out of work and move it.”
Students, faculty and staff who have an electric vehicle can purchase a parking pass for a reduced rate.
For example, students could purchase a C-zone parking pass for $50 if they have an electric vehicle instead of the $80 if they have a non-electric vehicle.
The charging stations are free for all students, faculty and staff that have a parking pass to use as often as they like. However, there are some rules for using the charging stations.
“They’re quick chargers,” Andrae said. “In less than two hours, they should be charged. They’re what they call level 2 chargers.”
That’s why there is a four-hour time limit for the charging spaces.
Alabama Power donated the 14 charging stations and installed them for free. Now parking services will cover any maintenance costs that come with maintaining the stations.
“We’ve been working on installing them, and we’re almost finished,” Andrae said. “We’ve got to do some electrical hook-ups, then they’ll be ready to go.”
All the stations have been installed. Currently the stations have no power, which is why there are still orange barriers in front of the spaces for the charging stations in each location.
“They’re [Alabama Power] waiting to connect all those up,” Andrae said. “Once they do that, we’ll take the barricades down and let people park and charge.”
Alabama Power offered parking services as many charging stations as they wanted, parking services just needed to figure out how many they wanted and where to put them.
Alabama Power funded the charging stations with a grant. The company gave charging stations to several Alabama universities, Andrae said.
Andrae and his team at parking services have been working on other changes as well.
Starting with the first day of fall classes, the fourth deck of the Stadium parking deck will have 29 spaces reserved for visitors. The rest of the spaces on the fourth deck will become B-zone spaces, like the three other levels of the deck.
“We’ll now have 29 spaces in the Stadium deck,” Andrae said. “We’ll have 26 spaces in the South Quad deck on the fourth level. We’ll have 66 spaces in the North Park deck, the one across from the Village, on the first level.”
This should be good news for students that live in the Village and have visitors, now they can park close by, Andrae said.
Andrae is trying to stay ahead of transportation technology improvements and is looking at how to accommodate ride-sharing services and autonomous vehicles.
“I think the biggest thing on autonomous vehicles, Uber and Lyft is going to be the drop-off and pick-up,” Andrae said. “Where can we do that? That’s what we’ve got to figure out. Where is a good place where we can have drop-off that’s convenient for the person who’s getting dropped-off and not impacting the safety of our students walking around campus?”
There are no plans set yet for where a drop-off and pick-up would be placed on campus for ride-sharing services and autonomous vehicles, Andrae said.
Andrae is also working with departments across campus to build the five-story parking deck at the Auburn University Hotel, 241 S. College St., which the Board of Trustees approved at their April meeting.
The latest plan has the first level zoned for valet parking for the Auburn University Hotel, the second and third level would be B-zone parking for the University and the fourth and fifth level would be Auburn University Hotel guest parking, Andrae said.
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