Parking on campus can be a real pain in the pocketbook. Owning a car costs money every day in gas and maintenance. But to top it all off, you’ll also have to pay anywhere from $267 to $374 to park in a lot so far from the main campus you still need to walk 20 minutes to get to class.
“The daily parking rate is too steep on a student budget. Many lots have a maximum of four-hour parking, which makes driving to school on a daily basis unrealistic,” said Olivia Perryman, a first-year computer science student who drives to campus every weekend for intramural sports.
“On the weekend the cost [$4] is definitely worth it as busses don’t run as frequently, and express busses, which I take, don’t run at all.”
The cost for parking on Carleton campus is $3.50 per hour, while the maximum daily fee depends entirely on which lot you choose to park in.
Some of the cheapest lots are the ones that require walking from as far away as Bronson and Sunnyside over in P7 or near Dow’s Lake in P6.
The lots that students often prefer to park in for proximity, such as P2 University Centre or P1 MacOdrum Library, charge $14.00 for a daily maximum of only four hours.
WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE?
While many students say they think the cost of parking is too high, there are good reasons for the wads of cash you need to fork over to park your car on school property, according to Brian Billings, assistant director of Carleton’s department of university safety.
“The fees we have to charge for parking facilities on campus help pay for line painting, new garages, repairing garages, and other maintenance,” Billings said.
But students already pay tuition, so why do they have to pay for parking, too?
“Parking services is an ancillary to the university,” Billings said.
This means parking services does not receive any money from the government, tuition, or grants. All of parking services’ income comes from parking passes and tickets.
“No one ever wants to pay for parking,” Billings said.
He went on to say the most common parking infraction on campus is failure to pay.
Parking services has tried to make paying for parking as easy as possible, Billings said, so if a student doesn’t pay it is really a choice they make—not from lack of accessibility, but a conscious decision not to pay.
You can pay at any of the pay stations across the lots, you can pick up a pass from parking services, or you can text to pay for parking, Billings said.
“Our rates are still lower than University of Ottawa and Algonquin,” Billings added.
“Parking rates have gone up at the same rate for years,” Billings said, “between two and three per cent per year.”
“We look across at other institutions, and the City of Ottawa, to see what they are doing in the city and compare our prices to theirs,” Billings said, explaining why parking rates increase every year.
PAYING FOR PROXIMITY
Faculty pay more for their parking passes than students. In some cases, it costs them almost triple the student rate.
Faculty are here more often than students, generally, Billings said, and they park closer to the university’s core.
“Parking near the centre core of campus drives the price,” Billings said. “Students are price-sensitive.” He added that student lots are more on the periphery of campus.
If they are planning to park on campus often enough that a $267 pass ends up being cheaper in the long run, a pass would be a better choice, Billings said.
If students park on campus less often, there are daily and weekly rates.
Lot 7, better known as the “gravel lot,” has the cheapest daily rate at $8. However, it is about a 10-minute walk from the parking lot to the university’s centre.
The lots that are closer to the university’s core, such as at the University Centre lot, have time limits for visitor parking.
Parking services like to keep those lots constantly changing, Billings said. It allows someone who is just running in to grab a textbook or attend only one class the ability to park and enter the building quickly—it’s more convenient.
CAN I OPT OUT?
Mohab Abdelkader, a second-year Carleton computer science student, said he has been parking on campus for two years.
“The only thing that frustrates me about [parking] is that I can’t opt out of the bus pass, or choose having a parking pass instead,” Abdelkader said.
Brooke Carroll, a Carleton student who lives in Kanata and pays $430 a year for a parking pass, said she is also frustrated with the lack of opt out options for the bus pass if you drive.
“If students who live within the OC Transpo radius drove and still had the option to opt out [of the U-Pass], then the money from the buses could be used for parking,” Carroll said. “Unfortunately, I’m a student who lives in Kanata and I can’t opt out. When I tried, they told me that ‘driving isn’t a good enough reason’ to get my $400 back.”
AFTER-HOURS PARKING
Another option is the after-4 p.m. parking pass. This works perfectly for part-time students who work throughout the day, Billings said. The permits are about half the cost of a normal permit.
This would also be ideal for late nights at the library with your head stuck in a book. Unfortunately, buses don’t run all night, but sometimes studying does.
Felicia Kislich-Lemyre, a first-year student, said she thinks parking is too expensive.
“I have an after-4 p.m. pass, which I think is a great deal, but if I ever have to come to school before then, the rates seem pretty high,” Kislich-Lemyre said. “It shouldn’t cost you $14 to park near the library for four hours.”
Students used to be able to pass along their day passes after they had finished using them. Now, parking services requires in most lots that you enter a license plate number that will show up on your parking pass, preventing the sharing of passes.
Paying for parking may be a pain, but it keeps the ground free from holes and the university’s parking lots expanding. It is also the cheapest in the city—one more reason to be happy you’re a Raven, not a Gee Gee.
THE COST OF TRANSPORTATION
While parking on campus costs an arm and a leg, it isn’t the only expense to consider when choosing to put the pedal to the metal. Your car basically drives away with all your money:
Insurance—for those times when someone rear-ends your brand-new used Mazda.
Gas—so you can drive all your non-car driving friends everywhere, because you wanted to be DD anyway, right?
Maintenance—so you don’t have to patch up that broken window with duct tape.
Owning a car costs more than some may think. Let’s say you drive a mid-size car:
Putting your foot on the gas costs money too, roughly $2,086 a year.
Insuring your car in case someone rear ends you adds up to roughly $1,904, and is mandatory in Canada.
Maintenance and depreciation adds up to roughly $10,729. Since we live in Canada those summer tires just won’t do the trick—winter tires are a must.
Don’t forget to add in parking on campus, which is an extra $267 to $374 per academic year.
That’s over $10,000 in car expenses for one year.
If you drive a pickup truck, the average yearly cost goes up to $13,938, which is almost equivalent to two whole years’ worth of tuition for a bachelor of arts degree.
To top it all off, none of these figures include the cost of the vehicle in the first place.
Vroom, vroom.
Hear that? It’s your savings account racing away.
