Parking problems on campus resulted in an excessive amount of parking fines from the Department of Public Safety last year, according to research conducted by a communication studies class.

“To be exact, $799,530 in [parking] fines were collected last year alone,” said Nathan Broshar, a junior in speech communication and a member of The Parking Team.

The Parking Team is part of a Communications Studies 214 class project.

The team reported possible solutions to parking problems at ISU in a presentation held Wednesday in the Gold Room of the Memorial Union.

The Parking Team claimed the university has not done its job in keeping up with growth and changes of the campus as far as parking is concerned.

Through research and interviews, the team found buildings such as Durham Center, College of Design, the Parks Library addition, Molecular Biology and the new Howe Hall were all built over parking areas.

“There was no allotment for any new spaces or any plans to have those spaces replaced,” Broshar said.

Broshar said the current parking situation would have been feasible 30 years ago.

“In the last 30 years, we have added 6,312 enrolled students and built 11 new buildings,” Broshar said.

He also said the number of faculty and staff has increased.

Broshar compared students 30 years ago to those of today. He said more students today have part-time jobs or live off campus, and find a car to be a necessity.

“It seems that only one real sacrifice has been made during the last 30 years,” Broshar said. “That [sacrifice] was parking lots.”

The goal of The Parking Team was to find possible parking solutions that would fit the needs of today’s university, Ashley Bushman, junior in sociology, said.

Bushman said the price of one parking space in an asphalt lot is $2,500 and a space in a parking ramp is $10,000.

Brian Bergman, freshman in agricultural business, suggested several short-term changes to ease the parking situation.

Some of his suggestions were making Osborn Drive wider and eliminating the gates that allow diagonal parking along the side, and replacing reserved parking in front of Beardshear Hall with metered.

Other proposals were to replace reserved parking in front of Alumni Hall with metered parking and create more parking around the dorms and on campus in general.

To help fund long-term solutions for parking problems, Bushman said the university should require a portion of money donated for buildings to be used for parking.

Bushman also said routing Cy-Ride through distant parking lots and the greek system on shorter, more frequent routes may ease campus parking problems.