The price for students to pay to park on campus is way too high. No matter where you park, you’re looking at $3.50 an hour, and a much heftier fine if you’re not willing to pay up front.
Many of the lots have a daily rate that varies depending on where you park. The most expensive ones cost $14 for the whole day. Some of these have a four-hour max—so even though you’re paying $14, you can’t be there for more than one class. The cheapest is eight dollars, plus a long walk from lot seven.
That means if you go to the school four times a week without a parking pass, you’re looking at spending at least $128 a month, probably more.
City parking tickets are often only $30, depending on the violation. At Carleton, you’re ticketed $50. It’s illogical the university’s fines are higher than the city’s, when students are already paying to take classes on campus.
The school already takes enough money from its students, so they don’t need to charge such an unreasonable price for visitor parking. One three-hour lecture will cost a student an additional $10.50 if they have a car for the day.
Other schools are far more reasonable with their rates. Trent University charges only one dollar an hour, with a daily maximum of seven dollars.
Buying a parking pass is well worth it if you plan on driving to campus more than once a week. The cheapest ones go for $267 dollars per semester.
The permits are reasonably priced, but if you do have a car you aren’t given the option to opt out of your U-Pass, so you end up paying for campus transportation twice over. This isn’t fair for students who would rather trade the U-Pass for parking. The high rates force students to either buy a permit or bus to school.
There are only a few conditions which will actually allow you to opt out of the U-Pass and they are very difficult to meet. If you live within OC Transpo’s operating zones or even Gatineau, you just aren’t allowed to opt out.
Owning a car isn’t cheap to begin with, without adding the annual cost of parking, plus the U-Pass we already pay for at $389. It’s not fair to force students to pay for a U-Pass they won’t use.
The $50 tickets that are handed out so easily to students hurt them even more financially. Every driver I’ve talked to at Carleton has received at least one of these fines, even those with a parking permit.
If you aren’t in the right area, you get a ticket. If you park somewhere at the wrong time, you get a ticket. The rules around parking are so strict they’re easy to misunderstand, so small mistakes can amount to a big price.
And if they don’t pay, Carleton wastes money paying a collections agency to identify the owner of the car and add the tickets to their student account. The owner of the car gets an aggressive letter telling them their credit will be destroyed if they don’t pay.
As a student who already pays more than $8,000 a year just to go to school, I think Carleton needs to be more reasonable with all of the additional fees that they charge on campus. I should remember my school with fondness when I leave, but instead I’ll see Carleton University as a money-hungry company that goes after students parked on campus while they work to get their already highly-priced degree.
