Penn State has decided to forge ahead with plans to build a new parking garage on west campus to provide more spaces for commuter students.

The new structure is slated to contain about 600 parking spaces along Corl Street and may be two stories high, Teresa Davis, Penn State's transportation director, said.

She said the cost has not been determined because construction plans are still in the preliminary stages.

"This is all in-house and conceptual right now," Davis said.

She added that before construction starts, the university must conduct a traffic impact study and conduct discussions with the State College Borough, as well as Ferguson and College townships.

Mark Whitfield, public works director for the borough, said initial plans include extending White Course Drive to College Avenue and using it as an access road to the new parking structure.

"The section of White Course just east of the parking structure would be limited to buses only," he said.

Preventing further traffic congestion is a priority, Whitfield added.

"The idea is to bring commuters to the Corl Street intersection with White Course Drive, and that would end at the parking garage," he said. "A commuter would grab a Loop to campus."

Davis said the new structure is intended to replace parking spaces lost to recently constructed academic buildings, relieving traffic congestion in other areas of campus.

This structure has been part of the university's plan for west campus since 1999, Davis said.

She added that the structure may initially be only one story and house three hundred spaces. They would then make plans to add the second level if parking continued to be a problem.

Eric Banier, Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) spokesman, said he the new garage may cause traffic problems for buses.

"CATA supports moving parking from the core of campus to the fringe. If it cuts down on campus traffic and since we travel [the] campus, we're affected by traffic," he said. "If it takes us longer to move around campus, we can make fewer trips throughout the day."

Banier also said the garage might result in less revenue for CATA.

Whitfield said the garage should not affect the amount of passengers who use CATA.

"When we eliminate parking, we need to construct additional parking elsewhere to accommodate those people," he said. "It is simply replacing lost parking in the core part of campus. If this is true, we should not see a drop in ridership."

Collegian staff writer Kaitlyn Sweeney contributed to this report.