Parking!

[SiKeS]

• Where do you park?
• How far away is it?
• How much do you pay for parking?
• Is parking an issue at your school?

I dunno about you guys, but at Mizzou, I'm finding that parking is a HUGE issue. That is... if you don't plan on living in the dorms...

If you're living in the dorms, you can get assigned a spot in a parking garage fairly close to your dorm (usually) for a fairly decent price...

If you're not living in a dorm, and are living in greek housing, you're pretty much screwed. There is parking along the streets of greek town, but they're ALWAYS taken.. Try parking in someones lot? Nope. You'll get booted quicker than you can lock your car doors...

The problem is especially bad if you're a girl living in a sorority with 150+ girls and 30 parking spaces... Most couldn't buy a spot at the house lot even if they wanted to... So many are forced to park at farrot field (about a 25min walk)..
Imagine having to walk 25mins everytime you had to use your car? Wow.

Their OTHER option is to purchase parking from a fraternity with extra spots... I've heard of many on campus charging from $400 (cheapest) to $900 (most expensive) per SEMESTER.. JUST for parking. How ridiculous is that?

I'll most likely get to park in the lot, with the large but worthwhile fee of $200 per semester.. It is $400 for anyone else wanting to purchase a spot.

Is parking this crazy for you all as well?

-Matt

[BabyP]

Where do you park? usually in the CSUS parking garage 1

How far away is it? not that far, but there are several other parking lots that are farther (depends on what buildings your classes are in)

How much do you pay for parking? I think my permit was 120 dollars. They raised it up from 80 recently cuz they are building a third garage.

Is parking an issue at your school? yes, it is a "commuter" university so everyone has cars and just too many students and cars and not enough space. Its not that bad for me since I take night classes. but mornings no way.....I avoid morning classes if i can cuz parking is HELL........

[lifesaver]

Originally posted by SiKeS


If you're living in the dorms, you can get assigned a spot in a parking garage fairly close to your dorm (usually) for a fairly decent price...

If Mizzou has reserved spots in a garage for a fairly decent price, than its the exception to the rule.


The rule of thumb at almost all universities is that if its a spot in a garage, its gonna be expensive. If you want a spot thats not expensive, its either on a street or so far away from where you need to be its almost on another campus.

[texas*princess]

• Where do you park? Across the street of campus property
  
• How far away is it? Right across the street
  
• How much do you pay for parking? Zero, since it's off campus property
  
• Is parking an issue at your school? Parking is usually a pretty big issue here at the school... there are more commuters than there are spaces available, and the campus tends to oversell the permits which causes further frustration because there are way more permits issued than there are available spaces
  
  A lot of people actually park across the street from the campus property lines and walk the rest of the way to class.. it's not much farther than commuters would park because most all the parking lots (except for the one parking garage) are on the outskirts of the campus property anyway.

[preciousjeni]

Parking was and continues to be a HUGE issue at UGA. My last semester, I was paying $30 per month (I was commuting from off campus) to park in an on campus deck. And, I still had to take a campus bus to get anywhere - as everyone does. $30 got me on campus, then I had to find my own way to class. It would have taken me at least 15 good minutes to walk to my primary building from my parking spot. Unfortunately, when I was there, the sidewalks were being worked on, so I really couldn't walk if I wanted to!!

[CarolinaCutie]

Where do you park? I park in a parking deck on campus.

How far away is it? It's about 10-12 minutes walk from my dorm and any of my classes. It's on the outskirts of the campus.

How much do you pay for parking? I pay $370 for the parking deck pass.

Is parking an issue at your school? Yes and no. We have three decks on campus, and they are adding on to the deck in which I park. I can always park in the other decks if I want for $5.00 a day (which is generally considered cheap). And 10 minutes, while it is inconvenient, is not killer. Our school does provide an escort van at night during the week so that you don't have to walk back in the dark, which is nice. BUT...

If I want to park close to my dorm or close to my class, it's a mess. The majority of spots around my dorm are 30 min. meters- and they make LOTS of money off of the parking tickets they give us! The other spaces around the dorm are coded so that faculty, commuters, and night students can park there. HOW does this make any sense? The dorm I live in is not by any sort of campus building other than the cafeteria. When was the last time faculty, commuters, and night students spent any sort of time in the dorm or in the cafeteria? It is useful for our sisters who are commuters, but they aren't a huge number of girls. There are similar problems all over campus. Residential students get screwed in the deal. I used to commute, and never had a problem finding parking.

[Kevin]

I drove one of these (still do) in college:



The inside was large enough for me to fold one of my seats against the wall and bungee my bike to it. Parking was not a problem, I parked in the BFE parking lot. I then got my bike out and rode to class. Was actually faster than trying to find decent parking and then walking.

[DZTUBAGIRL]

Wow! I thought parking at my school was bad. We think parking is bad here but compared to yours it's not. Most of the on campus student parking is around the dorms. Usually you can find a parking spot there and you will just have to walk to your dorm. Only like a 5 min walk. There are some commuter parkiing spots on campus but you have to be "special" to park there. Most of the commuters park accross the main road in a big parking lot and ride the bus to campus. The bus makes like 4 stops through out campus. I don't remember exactly what we pay for our parking permit but it isn't anywhere close to the amounts you al pay. I would say under 100.00 for sure. I guess I am lucky to go to a pretty small school.

[dakareng]

Parking has to be the biggest headache and is a hassle on every college campus I've ever been associated with. As an undergrad, we called them "hunting permits"! I attended a primarily commuter campus (less than 10% of students lived on campus) so there was no difference between residential/ non-residential permits. As I commuter, that sucked because the dorm students would move their cars after classes were over and when commuters tried to make their 8 am classes there was nothing left! (for those who think it doesn't make sense to allow commuters to be close to your dorm, have you ever looked at where else they can park? Maybe your lot isn't close to too many classroom buildings, but are there enough lots that are? You're already on campus to get to your classes, commuters aren't. The university doesn't care about making it convenient for residential students to be able to go off campus for anything) But-- at least that university had the enlightened attitude that students do drive. When I was in grad school at U Michigan, there was no such thing as a student parking permit. If you lived outside Ann Arbor (which I did), you could get a commuter permit which allowed you to park in commuter lots (over at the basketball arena/ football stadium) and take a bus to campus. That or you fed meters. Most of us fed meters (the professors made sure there was a break after 2 hours, otherwise we'd all walk out to feed our meters). The parking rules were enforced by the city, not the campus which made appealing tickets impossible.

I know several chapters that treat parking permits for the house separately from room pick- they are like gold!.

[GeekyPenguin]

At my first university parking was a HASSLE - I parked in the lot by my dorm, which had something like 700 spots for 3 dorms - nope, not enough, because all the other dorm parking lots were tiny. I paid something like $130 a year for parking there, though, so I can't complain.

When I moved into my sorority house parking was FREEEE which was fabulous, you just had to be a Gamma Phi to park there. I also liked it because I got to keep my on campus permit (I movedi in at semester) so I could drive down to the dorms. Nobody wants to walk a mile and a half across campus in snow!

At my current university, parking is outrageously expensive but I've not once had trouble finding a spot. I pay $700ish a year for garaged parking at a garage that's a block from my apartment and two blocks from the student union - it doesn't get too much better than that. They appear to have mastered supply and demand.

[CASIGKAP]

Well, parking is a nightmare at CSULB. It's downright impossible to find parking the first few weeks of class. After that, it thins out. However, you still have to hike up the hill rain or shine so that can be a pain in the ass. All the parking lots are in the worst locations b/c they are by the dorms but nowhere near the buildings that hold the classes so off-campus residents still have to park near the darn dorms & hike up the hill.

Parkins is only about $68 dollars a semester so it's not as bad as other places but when you're on a tight budget, every penny counts!

[DeltAlum]

I'm happy to hear that parking isn't a problem at some of your schools, but I've never been on a campus where parking wasn't one of the biggest complaints students have.

I probably paid more in parking tickets than I did tuition when I was in college.

[aephi alum]

Parking was murder at my alma mater. Students, undergrads in particular, were highly discouraged from having cars. And in Boston/Cambridge, you don't really need a car anyway.

Each of the two student family housing buildings has its own parking. The one I lived in actually had a garage.

All other students living on campus shared one parking lot that was wayyyy off at the far end of west campus. This was especially bad if you happened to live on east campus. Most east-campus residents parked along Memorial Drive; unfortunately that is a snow emergency route, strictly enforced, so whenever it snowed everyone had to move their cars into the lot.

Half the spots were for grad students, the other half for undergrads. Each undergrad dorm was allocated a handful of spots, which were given out by lottery. Grad students could pretty much have a spot for the asking. There were always fewer grad students with cars than spots, but the extra spots were not reallocated to undergrads.

There are separate commuter lots for those living off-campus, including off-campus fraternity and sorority houses. These are pretty convenient to campus (more so than the resident parking!).

Edit: Forgot to answer how much parking costs. It used to be $10/semester, then it suddenly got jacked up to $300/year. That's for residents; I'm not sure what commuters paid. Parking tickets usually ran around $10, but if you didn't pay, you couldn't register or receive your diploma.

One year, the parking office forgot to put the little R on the residential parking stickers (commuter student stickers were identical, but no R). An overzealous campus cop ran around the residential parking lot one afternoon, ticketing every car in the lot for not having a resident parking sticker. Did I mention the lot was keycard controlled, so you couldn't even get your car in the lot if you weren't entitled to park there?? A couple of people I know fought the ticket and won, but a lot of people just paid. $10/ticket x 150 cars = a lot of donuts

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Try parking in Manhattan or many places in NYC. It's so hard to find a spot on the street. The least expensive parking that my bf found was $350 per month in Manhattan so he parks in Queens for about half the price. No wonder I don't have a car.

When I was in college, the parking stickers were about $20 per year. You didn't get a reserved spot though. Parking became such a huge issue that they raised the price to about $200 per year. Eventually, freshmen living on campus were not allowed to have cars. I didn't have a car back then either.

[Cardinal026]

Like most of you, parking is a huge hassle at my school, so I was really excited to move into the new campus apartments that had its own parking lot that you had to swipe a card to get into. I assumed that this meant that I'd always have a space in the lot right behind where I lived - but actually it meant that the university was out to make money, and oversold the set number of spots, so we'd be forced to park illegally since there was no where else to go, and if we weren't up by 8am to move our cars..they got towed.