Campus parking has been stressing students out for years, according to 2008 UCLA research.
Where to put your car hasn’t gotten much easier since then, but parking reformers are aiming to change that by promoting a plan in which drivers will be charged more to park in the most coveted spots on campus.
Giancarlo Casimiro, a rising junior at Cal State Long Beach, says he would support demand-based parking because he thinks it could make a big difference at CSULB, which is mostly a commuter school full of student drivers.
“I know some people who commute from outside Long Beach and its neighboring communities,” he says. “Some even come from as far as an hour away and they have to wake up and get to school before 7 a.m. just to find decent parking.”
Casimiro, a pre-film and electronic arts major, is also unhappy that a parking permit that costs more than $100 per semester but doesn’t guarantee a spot.
“I think that we should pay less for far away parking slots,” he says. “Paying $123 for parking that’s half the campus away is ridiculous.”
Casey Jones, a parking and transportation services expert with SP Plus, says this is exactly one of the reasons he believes in the demand-based parking system.
“What I was seeing on college campuses that were using a hunting license approach — in which all permits and parking spots cost the same — was a lot of unhappy customers. People that bought a parking permit had some expectation that they could park in a particular spot, but then went there and couldn’t find a spot. And that created circumstances that really, in my mind, needed to be changed.”
Before becoming a VP at SP Plus, Jones served as a transportation director at both the University of Colorado-Boulder and Boise State University in Boise, Idaho.
“I can tell you from first-hand experience, on one of my campuses, there were physical confrontations on the parking lots between students where they were fighting for that last remaining parking space. We had to bring security in and separate them.”
Jones adds that once the system was changed, problems such as this quickly stopped. He is “a firm believer in this system and that it can absolutely help improve the customer or the parker’s experience.”
For Brandi Luff, a web design and development major at DeVry University in Kansas City, Mo., “the parking issue would depend on the size and even the layout of the campus and its parking lots.”
Luff, a rising senior, attended Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo. for three years before transferring to Devry and says that all parking lots were relatively an equal distance from campus.
“In this case, I don’t know how effective it would be to make ‘closer’ parking spots more expensive,” adding that changes need to be made on a case-by-base basis.
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Kristyn Patton, a spring 2014 graduate from Kentucky Wesleyan College in Owensboro, Ky., agrees. She says some parking lots of her small school were shared between school buildings and dorms, so she is unsure of what would be considered most valuable parking spaces.
“On-campus students would consider those spaces closest to the dorm building to be the most sought after,” the business administration student says, “But the commuter students would consider it those spaces closest to the classrooms.”
Jones is also aware that implementing a new parking plan on college campuses is “very complicated” because there are different users who have different needs and preferences, including people with accessibility needs, faculty and staff, vendors and contractors, commuter students, and resident students.
He adds the four main benefits to implementing a demand-based parking method include fairness in allocating parking resources and improved customer satisfaction because more certainty will be built into the system. The third positive outcome is a business effect — the fees will allow for the parking lots to be maintained, which is important because most on-campus parking spaces are self-supporting auxiliaries.
“The last major benefit is that pricing the parking appropriately helps encourage people to consider alternatives to driving, and so that has sustainability benefits for sure,” he adds.
Patton, the recent graduate says she can see these benefits of demand-based parking.
“It would allow students who don’t have to be on campus very often the possibility to pay a lower rate if they chose,” she says. “In an ideal situation, I could also see it cutting down on some traffic if you already have a designated area to park, thus cutting down on the time it takes to get to a class.”
Luff believes there could be positive outcomes as long as there are limits to how many parking permits are given to the more frequently used and more expensive spots.
“Can you imagine how mad someone would get if they paid extra money to park closer, but there still wasn’t a place to park because so many other people also had permits to park closer?”
Jones says it’s not uncommon to sell more permits for a parking facility, but there will usually be some limit in place.
“In our industry, it’s not uncommon to sell more permits for a particular parking facility because if the parking facility is big enough, we take advantage of the fact that people aren’t going to be there every day,” he explains. “But even with that, yes, you would limit the number of permits sold for most of your parking because that is what ensures you will have that service available for the people that have bought it.”
Ultimately for him, despite the fact that there are complications of figuring out parking on a college campus, it is important to improve methods for years to come.
“Parking on college and university campuses is very complex, but it’s so incredibly important to get right,” he says. “It is very much like quality instruction, great recreation, terrific housing and dining, and nice facilities. If we can’t ensure that students can access their college or university, then we’ve made a grave mistake and we have limited their ability to pursue higher education.”
Filed under: CAMPUS LIFE, VOICES FROM CAMPUS Tagged: Boise State University, Cal State Long Beach, college living, commuter students, DeVry University, Justine dela Rosa, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Northwest Missouri State University, UCLA, University of Colorado