July 16, 2003

Parking/HOV at the Lab

The entire parking policy at the Laboratory appears to be nothing more than an exercise in social engineering. Drusilla Price's letter to the Daily Newsbulletin spoke of 'enhancing' the Otowi lot. Enhancing apparently now means inconveniencing many people. She then referred to the 'success' of the park and ride.

From my perspective, parking at the Lab is a crudely constructed joke. People are gradually being forced to park further and further from where they work. This robs the Lab, and taxpayers, of productive time. As far as park and ride, I found that if I used that service it would take me an additional 90 minutes per day beyond what I now spend commuting. I can drive from Santa Fe in 35 minutes; the park and ride takes an hour, then I have to take a taxi to and from my building. According to Ms. Price, more than 10,000 people take the park and ride. At that rate, and being generous, more than 10,000 hours per month of lost productivity beyond just commuting are being committed to this project.

Excluding the park and ride users, if you take every worker who must now walk 10-15 minutes just to get to their workplace, say half of the work force, these costs alone add a minimum 1,000 hours per day of lost productivity. In what way does this not constitute waste? The Lab covers many square miles. Why are all the major projects being built on top of existing parking lots within Technical Area 3? Why is the philosophy of 'things will get worse before they get better' the mantra of our planners? Why not fix the parking problems, instead of increasing the inconvenience for everyone?

The time is long past for those who do our 'planning' to stop being the rock in the road. They should be striving for convenience, and efficiency, instead of apparently viewing their job as trying to force people to adopt some politically correct social engineering goal. This sort of philosophy has never worked, wherever it has been tried and should be abandoned.

--Greg Lockwood