If you’re a Stellenbosch student, you may know the joys of driving around campus. The hours of karaoke you can do on a 5km drive, the adrenaline rush of not knowing if your car will still be in the spot you left it, and best of all the daily imitation of a vulture as you search for the remnants of a parking space.
It probably won’t come as a shock to you that some students have expressed slight annoyance with the system as a whole. In fact, a recent survey, done by a Die Matie journalist, revealed that more than 89% of participants classified the parking situation in Stellenbosch as very poor.
When asked to describe traffic on campus, student’s responses included “Leave your house 2 hours earlier if you want to get to your reservation on a Friday afternoon”, “Flex tape can’t even fix it”, “The traffic situation in Stellies in genuinely a joke” and “Dis f*kn k*k”.
But is it remotely possible that students may not be complete victims of this system, could we be responsible for part of this pile-up? For example, if there were people who lived at most a 15 minute walk away from where they needed to be, and for some reason still chose to drive around, would that present an issue? 65% of the surveyed students living in Stellenbosch use private vehicles as their main method of transportation, with less than 1% using ride sharing. This implies that a majority of Stellenbosch residents are not only commuting unnecessarily, but are doing so alone, with four open seats.
So is there a light at the end of this congested tunnel? Maybe if we decided to give our engine a break and walk the ten minutes to Engineering, or make use of the shuttle service that – in its most popular month – was used a measly 3361 times. Alternatively, we could work to create reliable groups to carpool with (which has the additional benefits of being cheaper and environmentally friendly.) If we do these things, we can begin to make a dent on something other than our Mum’s BMW. Just something to think about on your drive in tomorrow.
By Sophia Leher and Sebastiaan Whitward
