Parking is a vital asset for any campus. It’s an important amenity for students, visitors, and staff and faculty members, all of whom want safe, convenient, and affordable parking close to classrooms, dorms, and other campus buildings. And it can be a crucial source of revenue.
When managed effectively, parking plans can help foster campus safety and quality of life by helping to reduce roadway congestion. And when parking facilities are coordinated with public transportation and campus shuttle services, they can help promote sustainability. Also, by combining strategic pricing strategies and support for alternative transportation, colleges can dissuade students from bringing vehicles onto campus at all.
Colleges’ approach to how much to charge for parking can play a decisive role in how effective campus parking is as a planning tool and a revenue source. If they charge too much, students and employees will avoid parking facilities in favor of other options. If they charge too little, demand for spaces will exceed supply, campus roads will be overcrowded, and drivers and pedestrians alike will be less safe.
The idea is to price parking high enough to generate revenue, while also providing less-expensive options on the periphery of the campus. It’s a matter of supply and demand.
For the strategy to be effective, however, the prices must be sufficiently differentiated. A difference of $5 per month between close-in and remote parking is not likely to change behavior. Sometimes this may mean raising the price of central parking and lowering it in remote lots. Drivers who value the savings will use the economy lots, while those who care more about convenience will continue to park in the premium lots.
The goal should be to assure that 10 to 20 percent of spaces are available in any given lot, even at peak times. This ensures that parkers can generally find parking in the lot(s) in which they have purchased privileges, regardless of when they arrive. The advantage of this approach is that it leaves the parking decisions in the driver’s hands — the college doesn’t have to manage who parks where — while at the same time generating additional revenue. Of course, students and employees won’t use those remote lots and structures if there isn’t a convenient way for them to get from their vehicles to their classes and jobs. That’s why it’s incumbent upon planners to coordinate parking with public transportation or campus shuttle systems. Transportation must be offered to and from remote lots, and parking revenues should absorb the cost.
The goal should be to assure that 10 to 20 percent of spaces are available in any given lot, even at peak times.
This coordination between parking and transportation shouldn’t be limited to shuttle routes. Many colleges use parking revenues to promote and support the use of public transportation by students and employees. This is sometimes done through the development of park-and-ride options or transportation centers that combine bus stops with parking. Drivers who don’t want to take their vehicles on campus, or who don’t want to pay higher prices for on-campus parking, can use public transportation.
Some colleges use parking revenues to help underwrite bus and other alternative transportation systems. It’s not about managing parking spaces; it’s about managing the interaction of a parking and transportation system.
Colleges derive many benefits from using parking revenues to promote public transportation. One of the most significant is supporting campus sustainability efforts, a rising priority on many campuses. Reducing the number of vehicles on roads and in parking facilities is good for the environment; new electric and natural-gas buses are even greener. Fewer cars on campus — and fewer cars circling parking areas waiting for spaces to open up — also means less congestion.
So, how can colleges put these pricing and planning approaches into effect? The first step is to determine whether there is sufficient parking on campus, and whether existing parking space is being managed efficiently. The best way to determine whether supply is adequate is through an inventory-and-occupancy study, which involves counting empty and full spaces over a period of time to determine which facilities are over- or underused.
Once that determination is made, new pricing and permit-distribution plans can realign usage by raising parking rates in heavily used facilities to encourage price-conscious parkers to move to other spaces. If a particular lot or structure is always full or has a waiting list, it’s a good indication that the college isn’t charging enough for its use.
Overflow privileges can be established to provide access on the rare occasions that a particular facility does fill up. That said, it’s acceptable to oversell spaces, because students don’t attend classes on the same schedule. As a result, colleges can oversell and still expect to achieve 80- to 90-percent capacity at any given time. The precise amount of oversell will vary by lot size, location, and customer base, and should be established through careful monitoring.
It can be tempting to think of parking pricing as merely a mechanism for raising revenue. However, its role as a planning tool for influencing parking and commuting behavior, reducing congestion, and promoting sustainability is just as important. And to be effective, a plan must reflect the unique characteristics, challenges, and opportunities presented by the individual campus.
David Lieb and John Dorsett are campus-parking consultants.
