Following a slew of complaints in the past few days, University Transportation is working to change the way students buy parking permits.

According to Christine Klein, public communications specialist for University Transportation, the transportation website experienced significant problems because the system became severely overcrowded on the first days of purchase per credit group.

“The system was very slow on initial purchase days. We have several sophisticated systems that have to interact with each other—the parking allocation software, the credit card processor and our payment website.

Credit eligibility, housing assignment—if applicable—and other qualifiers are analyzed before a permit is offered,” Klein said. “The best analogy is to picture a crowd rushing a door. People stumble, fall down and no one is able to enter. That’s basically what happened.”   

Chandler Thompson, senior in economics and student body president, said her experience with the current system has at times been quite nerve-racking.

“I used the system last year, and I remember the online process moving slowly and worrying about getting a pass,” Thompson said. “There is extra stress because when I was entering information and it wouldn’t load or accept it quickly I knew I was racing against other students for a pass.”

At the same time, Thompson said she believes the Office of Transportation is actively working to update its systems, and said she’d like to work with them to make the process as smooth as possible.

“I would like to work with transportation to explore options for a parking system that can handle large volumes of requests at one time,” Thompson said. “If that is not possible, maybe break it down into smaller groups so the demand is not high at one point in time.”

According to Klein, while the permit system has not experienced many changes since its inception, it is meant to make it easier for students with more credits to purchase better permits.

“The process hasn’t changed significantly. This is our third year for online sales. We did change the eligibility credit requirements slightly to do a better job of balancing supply and demand,” Klein said. ”We want to ensure the most desirable permits are offered on a seniority basis.”

While Klein said the process might frustrate students, she hopes implementing a queue system will help organize the chaotic scramble to purchase these permits.

“We’re asking students to be patient. We had planned on implementing a queue system for next year to let purchasers know their place in line and, hopefully, alleviate some of the frustration experienced during the initial sale days,” Klein said. “Because of the slow system, purchasers were hitting the refresh button which showed an artificial permit availability number. With the queue system, people know their place in line and don’t feel like they’re out in ‘cyber space.'”

According to Klein, the Office of Transportation regrets that it was forced to shut down its website from Monday afternoon to 9 a.m . Tuesday; however, she said this gave them time to fix their system to make it less painful for students once it was restored.

“We understand and sympathize with students’ frustration. When we realized we had a technical problem, we initially thought we could fix our problem and briefly delay the sale,” Klein said. “After speaking with all the parties supporting the online sale, we opted to delay the sale for an entire day to give us time to fix the technical problems and put extra office phone capacity in place to ensure our customers were able to talk with a ‘live’ body and not be subjected to busy phone lines or voice mail.”

While Klein said the past few days have been chaotic as a result of the many problems their systems have faced, she said overall students have been responsive to the University’s attempts to right the issues.

“I think people understand problems can occur even with the best laid plans,” Klein said. “We’ve actually received some thank you emails from parents and students we spoke with who appreciated our efforts to fix problems and sell them the appropriate permit.”