As anger around the lack of parking at Camosun College's Interurban Campus continues, local unions are working to relieve parking woes for instructors and students alike.

During the winter 2025 semester, Mondays and Wednesdays are particularly busy, with over 100 classes scheduled across the campus. However, the parking issue becomes most pronounced on Wednesdays, when nearly 200 classes are heldB次元官网网址攔oughly double the number of classes scheduled on other weekdays.

In early January, a Camosun instructor , frustrated that even as an instructor, he sometimes has to park outside of campus, and on an average day, he sees multiple students come late to class due to the lack of parking. He also sees them parking illegally, or aimlessly driving around the lots, looking for an opportunity to park.

"The faculty union has aggressively pursued alternative transportation incentives through bargaining and in our grievance meditations," said Lynelle Yutani, president of the Camosun College Faculty Association.

Parking on campus is no new issue, though, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the school had a shuttle bus between both campuses and other stops including one that went to the West Shore. The shuttle service was completely shuttered in 2021.

"The college has continually claimed the cost to run the shuttle service was prohibitive," said Yutani. "The CCFA attempted to bargain a number of alternative transportation incentives with the college in our last round of bargaining, including the return of the shuttle. The college refused because they said it was too expensive."

Union members were willing to use non-salary funding from the Shared Recovery Mandate to fund a new shuttle service, but they were only able to secure bus passes for continuing faculty members over the last round of union bargaining.

Though most students pay for a bus pass, Steven Nixon, a trades instructor and the Camosun bargaining unit chair for the BC General Employees' Union, said transit isn't always the best option for students. About four to six per cent of trade students use transit to get to campus, he said, and many of his students tell him transit can double or triple their travel time compared to travelling by vehicle.

For example, the Langford bus exchange to Camosun is a 40- to 60-minute trip in the morning, which is about double the time to drive; going the reverse can be triple the time.

Last year, the CCFA brought forward arbitration due to the college's inability to provide instructors with the right to free parking, which is guaranteed in their collective agreement. The union successfully argued that the college had failed to meet its obligation to employees.

Through mediation, the school agreed to change what was primarily a student parking lot to a staff parking lot. However, even after the settlement, fewer than 20 per cent of the estimated 1384 parking spaces at Interurban are marked for staff only, which still isn't enough according to Justin Curran, the instructor who raised concerns.

The staff-only spaces are also shared with union staff and school administrators.

"Reorganizing the lots, increasing the visibility of signage, and increasing enforcement were viewed to be the best ways to solve the problem - and these seemed to be successful in the fall, when according to the class schedules, there were far more courses scheduled than this winter," said Yutani. "I imagine that the weather and service reductions by BC Transit are both contributing factors for people choosing to drive more frequently."

Yutani says with the large number of students showing up on Wednesdays, on top of all the employees required for operations, it is not an easy fix. "You can see that the problem isn't going to be easily solved," she said.

"The college has also had to increase the number of accessible parking spaces to accommodate both students and employees with disabilities," she said. "The unions and student society are all deeply motivated to work together with the college to find a solution."