With the start of the new school year, Grand Valley State University has overhauled the way parking permits are handled for students, faculty and staff planning to park at both the Allendale and Pew campuses.

“There’s more consistency,” said Lisa Garringer, parking systems coordinator. “We’re increasing convenience for customers while keeping in line with university initiative for sustainability and cost effectiveness.”

Any permit that is not a decal has been moved to a dashboard style as opposed to the hang tags used in the past. Garringer said as car designs diversified, readability was becoming an issue for parking enforcement. Also, commuter parking passes now are priced at the same rate as residential parking passes.

Decals should be located on the lower, left-hand side of the windshield, and the temporary passes should be located on the lower, left-hand side of the dash. The same color coordination as in the past will apply; faculty as blue, commuter students as red, residential students as yellow and visitor passes as green.

“By getting everything in one area, it makes it easier for everyone to read and it decreases the cost of printing,” Garringer said, adding that the printing cost decreased from 30 cents per decal to six cents.

Numbers for the savings to the university are still inconclusive.

In an effort to make parking information more convenient for the GVSU community, DPS has now dedicated an area of their website to parking, “The Parking 411.”

On the website, users can choose what category they fall under, which allows users to quickly find an answer to their specific situation.

To be more proactive in helping guests with parking, “The Parking 411” allows guests of faculty and staff to obtain a permit before even reaching the campus by entering the guest’s name and e-mail address.

Enforcement of parking permits has already begun, though on Fridays the university will stop enforcing faculty and staff parking after 5 p.m.

For more information, visit “The Parking 411” at www.gvsu.edu/gvpd.

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