With another academic year beginning, UT Parking and Transit Services has made some changes to help accommodate student, faculty, and staff parking needs and make navigating campus construction easier.
UT begins the fall semester offering more than 775 new parking spots for commuters and 175 new spots for residential students.
All faculty, staff, and students need a current UT parking permit to use campus lots. Students can purchase their permit online. The permit will arrive in the mail, but purchasers will receive a temporary permit (PDF) with their receipt. The temporary permit will allow students to immediately park in their designated area for ten days until the hangtag permit arrives.
Students residing in fraternity and sorority housing must purchase their 2016–17 permit at the Parking and Transit Services office, 2121 Stephenson Drive, since they have to be preapproved by the Office of Sorority & Fraternity Life.
All students, faculty, and staff should ensure their permit or hangtag is properly displayed.
Volunteer Boulevard Garage
A new six-level garage at the former site of Stokely Athletic Center opened Monday, August 8, offering more than a thousand parking spaces. Commuter students have access to more than 800 spaces (C-9) within the Volunteer Boulevard Garage (G-16). The other 200 spaces are reserved for staff parking. The entrance is on Pat Head Summitt Street near Volunteer Boulevard.
The garage will offer smart parking technology that will allow UT app users to see availability in real time.
Commuter Students
Peak hours for all parking on campus are 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Commuters are encouraged to arrive early and ride the T transit system while on campus. The larger garages –G-10 on Neyland Drive, the Eleventh Street Garage, and the White Avenue Garage–fill up early in the day.
Parking and Transit Services encourages commuters to become familiar with less-used lots, such as C-15 off Neyland Drive east of the John D. Tickle Engineering Building. Other lots include C-1, beside the Lindsey Nelson Baseball Stadium; C-7 (previously N-8), between Terrace and Caledonia Avenues; and C-11, at the corner of Lake Avenue and Volunteer Boulevard.
The C-18 Poplar Street lot, across from the Knoxville Convention Center on the Henley Street side, offers 100 spaces for commuters on most weekdays. Another 150 spaces are available in the adjoining Church Street United Methodist lot, C-26, on weekdays.
Commuters also are allowed in the UT Visitors Center lower lot, south of the traffic light at the entrance.
Some on-street metered parking along Volunteer Boulevard has been eliminated as construction continues on the streetscape project.
Noncommuters (Residential Students)
The Lake Avenue Garage has been converted to noncommuter-only parking. This conversion adds 550 spaces for residential students.
Ag Campus Overflow Parking
The C-11 lot, formerly N-15, on the corner of Lake Avenue and Volunteer Boulevard, is now commuter parking. The C-22 lot, formerly Staff Lot 22, at Volunteer Boulevard and Todd Helton Drive, also is commuter parking.
Faculty and Staff
Two hundred new staff spaces are in the new garage on Volunteer Bolevard at Pat Head Summitt Street. Staff Lot 23, beside the steam plant at Neyland Drive and Lake Loudoun Boulevard, has reopened.
Staff parking (S-12, S-37) in the Lake Avenue Garage has been eliminated.
Faculty and staff who park in Staff Lots 9 and 23 now have access to on-street parking along Volunteer Boulevard from the Natalie Haslam Music Building to the Johnson-Ward Pedestrian Mall. Staff Lot 41 has been eliminated at the UT Visitors Center.
The lot on the corner of Terrace and Lake Avenues, which was a formerly N-6A noncommuter parking lot, will be open until further notice for Staff 12 and commuter parking.
Motorcycle Parking
Due to streetscape improvements, motorcycle parking has relocated from its previous location across from the Torchbearer statue to behind the Circle Park information booth and behind the Clarence Brown Theatre in Staff Lot 23.
Accessible Parking
Students, faculty, and staff who need accessible parking are now required to purchase and display a UT permit along with their valid state-issued handicap-accessible placard or license plate.
The dual registration requirement aims to greatly reduce misuse of accessible parking spaces. In order to obtain this new repositionable sticker, purchasers need to bring a photo ID, state registration for the accessible placard, and a valid accessible placard or license plate DMV record to the Parking and Transit Services office at 2121 Stephenson Drive. All vehicles displaying dual registration may still park in any accessible space as well as any unreserved space not designated for UT vehicles.
Ride the T
The T transit system resumes its schedule on Monday, August 15, offering four fixed routes (the Hill, Neyland Express, the Fort, and Late Nite), accessible van service, and the T Link. Beginning Wednesday, August 17, two on-demand routes to Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Pelissippi State Community College and the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM) at Cherokee Farm resume regular service.
For more information about T routes, scheduling, and our real-time tracking system for buses, visit the T website.
Get the App
Students, faculty, and staff can download the UT app and use the Transit feature on the main page to see the location and route of the T bus in their vicinity, watch T buses move in real time, check the arrival predictions for the T approaching a specific stop, and set an alert that tells them when their specified T bus is approaching.
The Transit feature also offers Safe Ride, an on-demand passenger trip request system for the T-Link. Students can send a request via a mobile device and will receive a text when their ride is near. The UT app is available for download through ITunes and Google Play.
Other Transportation
Parking and Transit Services also partners with Zipcar, the nation’s leading car-sharing program. Students can register to reserve a self-service, on-demand car online or on their phone for as little as an hour or as long as four days. The vehicles are in the RecSports parking area.
To stay up to date on future changes, visit the Parking and Transit Services website and follow @UTKParking on Twitter.
Questions should be directed to Parking and Transit Services at 865-974-6031 or parking@utk.edu.
For more information, visit Parking and Transit Services.