Miami University has made some major changes to the parking options available to students.

Changes to the parking permit system include combining the green passes for graduate assistants with red faculty passes, and eliminating purple passes in exchange for yellow passes for all off-campus students, according to Lt. Ben Spilman of the Miami University Police Department.

The yellow pass only allows students to park in the Ditmer and West Millett parking lots until 7 p.m. After 7 p.m., students with passes are allowed to park in any permitted area.

Students also still have access to the parking garages, but only on an hourly basis, with rates still at $1.00 for the first hour, and $0.50 for each additional hour.

According to George MacDonald, assistant director of parking and transportation services, the rates have not changed from last year, however, the semester pass for parking garages has been eliminated.

Another parking policy change this year is that all street parking is restricted until 7 p.m.

In the past, some streets would open at 4 p.m., and the rest of the locations would open at 7 p.m., but this caused confusion and led to illegal parking across campus, according to MacDonald.

“We made the 7 p.m. parking on the streets uniform to keep things more simple and hope this results in less citations,” MacDonald said.

The new policies have negatively affected junior Kaitlin Pizzimenti, who said she planned her class and work schedule around being able to drive to and from campus under last year’s parking regulations.

“I feel that the parking changes would have been received better if they had been announced when students were scheduling for their fall semester classes so they could make appropriate plans” Pizzimenti said.

However this was not possible as the changes were not finalized until August 6, MacDonald said.

Some students say another negative consequence of the changes is an inhibited ability to attend extracurricular activities beginning at 7 p.m., or at least making them on time.

Junior Anna Hartman, said she was late to a meeting at 7 p.m. because of the recent parking changes.

“I made it to campus on time, but I sat in my car until seven because I didn’t want to get a ticket” Hartman said.

These changes were made due to construction and efforts to comply with Miami’s sustainability commitments, according to Spilman.

“We lost over 200 parking spaces due to the construction, and there are no plans to create new parking” Spilman said.

Parking and Transportation has opened up new areas to help mitigate the lost parking, but about 17 parking spaces were still lost for both blue and red passes, according to MacDonald.

According to Spilman, Parking and Transportation is also working on creating a sustainable transportation model, both financially and economically.

“Single occupant trips to and from class create congestion and increase pedestrian risk” Spilman said.