A young man with brown eyes and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap waits for an available parking spot. Driving up and down the parking lanes, the student is upset because he cannot find a space. After 10 minutes of driving, he finally sees someone leaving and parks his gray Chevrolet Silverado truck.

“I have to leave one hour before class starts to drive from Boynton Beach to the Boca Raton campus so I don’t have to worry about traffic and finding a parking spot,” says senior criminology major Perry Menshell. “Traffic in the morning sucks. There’s always something happening on I-95,” Menshell says.

Menshell, who takes the half-hour drive to and from school four mornings a week, is a full-time FAU student who works part-time at a Publix supermarket.

Although his spring semester class started at 8 a.m., Menshell says he had “to be up by 6:15 a.m. and leave my house by 6:45 to make sure I had enough time to get a parking spot.”

Parking and traffic are increasing problems for student commuters. FAU students drive from Port St. Lucie, Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter just to get to classes in Boca Raton.

Because some courses are not offered at the Jupiter, Davie and Fort Lauderdale campuses, students are driving one to two hours to take the classes they need for graduation.

“I don’t understand why the same classes that are being taught in Boca Raton are not taught in the Davie campus,” Marisol Lores, a senior multimedia major, says. “I think the university should have two to five majors in each campus so students don’t have to worry about driving to multiple campuses to take classes.”

Lores lives in Pembroke Pines and has to drive to the Boca Raton and Davie campuses because classes for her major are not offered at just one campus. Students are leaving their homes early to put gas in their cars so they can drive to campuses all over South Florida to find parking.

“With the prices of gas, traffic on I-95 and Glades Road, I have trouble getting to school on time if I don’t leave my house early. When I arrive on campus, I wonder if there’s going to be any space available,” Lores says. “I sometimes get lucky and get an available spot, but when I don’t, it takes me 15 minutes to park.”

Assistant Director for Traffic and Parking Judy Ferris says the university “will require parking as it grows.” Ferris explains there are proposed plans to build new facilities as well as parking lots and garages.

There are currently two parking garages on the Boca Raton campus. Each accommodates 1,030 cars on five levels. The garages are located on Volusia Street, just west of the library, and at Lot 1, east of the Dorothy F. Schmidt Visual Arts Center and west of Florida Atlantic Boulevard.

The University’s Board of Trustees has plans for four more parking garages with about 1,000 parking spots each. Two new parking garages would be north of Lee Street, one would be south of the dorm complex and one would be north of the athletic complex.

“Since the price of land is high, we decided it would be best to build vertically,” says Thomas Donaudy, associate vice president and university architect. “It would save the university money and the property value of the school would increase.”

There also are plans with the city of Boca Raton for more mass transit; among the ideas is a Tri-Rail shuttle system.

“Ridership will grow if we have a transit. It will save students hundreds of dollars in gas money and less worries about driving to campus,” says Donaudy. “The concept behind these plans is to make the school pedestrian-friendly.”

More on-campus housing also would ease traffic and parking. Plans call for an additional 2,000 or more beds on campus, nearly doubling current capacity. Donaudy says new dorms would hopefully decreases traffic and give students an opportunity to ride their bikes to and from class.

Until these new plans are put into act, traffic and parking are likely to be problems for the foreseeable future. Students will continue to encounter heavy traffic on Glades Road, I-95, Florida’s Turnpike and State Road 7/441. They will also have to continue to hunt for parking spaces.

“I’m graduating this semester, but I really think the school should build more parking garages and spaces,” says Kelly Liyakasa, a senior multimedia major. “I think the school should plan for future students.”