Column: Driving us mad, parking frustrates students
In the 21st century, attending a university is among the most stressful decisions a young American can make, in large part due to cost. Tuition rates are three times what they were 50 years ago, and there are many associated costs that keep raising the bill.
Per Utah State University Parking & Transportation Services website, the average cost of a full-year student parking pass at USU is $190 for students who live on campus and $177 for students who commute, as of this spring. For faculty and staff, that number rises to $318. As the cost of living continues to rise, many students find it difficult to afford the cost year after year.
In an interview with The Utah Statesman, Cohen Thatcher, a junior majoring in chemistry, said they feel USU overcharges for passes, especially near Maverik Stadium.
“Given how inaccessible it can be for certain locations, as well as when they close off 90% of the stadium for games, that’s kind of a bit presumptuous of them,” Thatcher said. “There’s a lot of students that are still trying to get here, especially in the STEM community, and it’s unfair to make people pay for those passes if you’re just going to close it off for games.”
Another concern is that of safety. Many students feel uncomfortable traversing parking lots and garages due to the perceived risk of crime, either to themselves or their property, and statistics suggest their fears may be justified. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, more than 10% of property crimes occur in parking lots, and the FBI reported 5.7% of hate crimes happen there as well.
Michael Bailey, a senior majoring in history and linguistics, told the Statesman safety was one of his main concerns with parking at USU.
“There are students who have to go through the parking lot at night, and we had one incident — I think it was a year ago, a year and a half ago — where somebody got assaulted,” Bailey said. “I think students would be safer if there was a way to reliably transport students more effectively, maybe not just the shuttles, but something akin to an on-campus scooter, or maybe like a panel van that has windows that people could get in.”
Difficulties aside, most students seem to want more parking. Major complaints include a lack of availability, distance from lots to campus and a perceived unreliability in other transport options, such as the Aggie Shuttle. In the future, USU should prioritize development that encourages plurality in transport, allowing and encouraging students to make it to and from class without a car.
Sawyer Berggren, a second-degree exploratory student with a focus in pre-health, said he wants city and university officials to stop prioritizing car-centric development in an interview with the Statesman.
“It is not ideal,” Berggren said when asked about the state of parking on campus. “It could be helped by making public transit more accessible. It’s not super convenient for me to take the bus system up to campus because it would require at least one transfer.”
Berggren said having undeveloped green spaces on campus are important and that continued expansion of parking projects threatens these areas.
“That’s part of what makes campus so beautiful. We have the Quad, and we have nice little places in nature,” Berggren said. “I don’t think that those should be turned into more parking.”
Numerous studies, such as the Journal of Transport Geography’s “Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment,” point in a similar direction, with findings showing that the more car-dependent a city, the worse it fares. Among a bevy of negative effects, the Yale Environment Review found that parking lots and garages disproportionately exacerbate the urban heat island effect, worsen flooding risks and increase the concentration of pollutants in water runoff. They also lead to higher emissions by encouraging people to drive through induced demand.
There are proven drawbacks when the majority of a populace drives. Per the National Library of Medicine, everyday driving is associated with insufficient physical activity, short sleep, obesity and worse mental health. It also unfairly reduces opportunities for active transport or safe outdoor play, meaning that even those who would prefer not to drive are often forced to due to a lack of viable options.
In an interview with the Statesman, Sara Miranda Corrales, a sophomore majoring in geology, said the over saturation caused by induced demand reduces options for disabled students.
“It’s really frustrating. There are very few spots for disabled folks here,” Corrales said. “I use crutches, which sometimes stresses me out because my crutches will move in ways that I worry will hit the car next to me. My disabled parking pass expired recently. I just renewed it, but for the time that I wasn’t able to park in disabled spots, it was so worrying to hit other peoples’ cars because it is such a tight squeeze.”
As contradictory as it may sound, the solution to these problems is less parking, not more. Cities and universities around the world were originally designed for multimodal transport, a history that is especially evident in the United States. Most urban centers built before 1900 are dense, uniform and easy to navigate, only becoming unwalkable once one ventures into post-war suburban developments.
As for USU, preventing further parking projects would save both time and money, which could be reinvested into making other ways of getting on campus more efficient. In the long-term future, gradually reducing and reallocating the number of parking spots would allow USU to continue expanding without taking additional land, conserving existing greenfield land while opening up room for more classrooms and other amenities. Existing demand for parking could be shifted to public and active transport by continued development of on-campus housing and new transit lines around the valley.
Most Aggies made it on campus by foot or by streetcar 100 years ago, and 100 years from now, it may be the same. We must decide how we want those future students to view the current generation: either as forward thinkers who made changes ahead of the curve or as stragglers who waited until society changed them instead.