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To the Editor: 

Some comments on your July 31 article on UC Berkeley’s extremely high employee parking fees: I am told that in 1960, parking was essentially free (a $5 charge for an annual sticker). By the time I arrived as a very junior faculty member in 1968, the annual fee was $60. The nominal reason for the institution of those rather substantial fees ($60 then had the purchasing power of roughly $250 now) was to have funds to construct additional parking facilities. But in fact much of the money was eaten up by the very cost of enforcing the parking regulations. 

Over the past 30 years the total number of parking spaces has decreased by many hundreds, while the parking fee for faculty is now $1200, slated to rise to $1400 next year. In real terms, this is more than five times the 1968 rate. 

Moreover, as everyone says, those costly parking permits are mere “hunting licenses.” And woe to those who have to leave campus during the day to keep an appointment; chances of finding a legal space upon return are slimmer than a stick of dehydrated spaghetti.  

But remember George Orwell: some animals are more equal than others. There are special reserved spaces for campus VIPs. Worse, many of these spaces stand vacant much of the time. I was curious enough to phone Harvard's parking director some years ago, and she informed me that Harvard would never think of “squandering a scarce resource” in that way. So which is more democratic – “elitist” Harvard, or the “people’s university” Berkeley? 

My sympathies to Berkeley's parking director Nadesan Permaul; he is caught in a very tight space indeed. 

Paul R. Chernoff 

Professor of Mathematics 

University of California, Berkeley