The word “parking” carries only one connotation at TCU – negative.That’s because our automobile-obsessed culture isn’t conducive to college campuses, places built for aesthetics and walkability. Campuses do not accommodate the mammoth frames of our beloved F-350s and Hummer H2s.

So those who believe they must drive everywhere are understandably frustrated about parking problems.

But what if we didn’t drive everywhere we went?

A study by the Texas Traffic Institute released Sept. 18 is dismal: The urban mobility report shows the average U.S. driver wastes 38 hours per year sitting in traffic.

That’s bad, but the Metroplex is worse. Drivers in Dallas/Fort Worth fritter away an average of 58 hours and 40 gallons of gas per year in gridlock.

Nationally, the study said, traffic delays wasted 2.9 billion gallons of fuel worth $78.2 billion on 2005. And census data reports that about three-quarters of all commuters drive to work alone.

It’s obvious that wasted money and wasted time haven’t stopped us from hopping into our cars despite the bottleneck awaiting us.

So what are we to do?

The urban mobility report says the solution is a combination of adding necessary roads, improving public transportation, telecommuting and carpooling. But considering the rate at which our cities are growing, that may be easier said than done.

That’s where universities come in.

The public transportation systems on college campuses should serve as a model to the rest of America – they compensate for their inability to accommodate mass volumes of drivers and their cars by utilizing other means of transportation.

At bigger universities such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison or the University of Colorado at Boulder, most students – especially underclassmen – don’t have cars.

Instead, the universities provide vast and intricate bus systems and they encourage students to bike to school.

At TCU, neither a public transit system nor a bike culture exists to such an extent. But the parking problem actually provides a little hope.

With parking at a premium, students who live close enough to campus are almost forced to walk or ride a bike.

So maybe TCU administrators should continue to ignore incessant student complaints about parking. They’ve done a pretty good job of it so far.

But in the process, they are creating another model: When driving is too inconvenient, people will find another way to get there.

Kailey Delinger is a senior news-editorial journalism and Spanish major from Fort Collins, Colo.