OPINION | Parking on campus should not be such a privilege  

I have spent $1,412.20 on parking services during my six semesters at UCCS, not counting the $54,000 in out-of-state tuition. 

Since students pay so much for tuition, they deserve to have reasonably priced permit options. Paying $250 each semester to park for classes with mandatory attendance feels cruel and unfair, especially for commuter students, who don’t have a choice but to buy a permit.  

Last semester, I was too late in purchasing my central campus permit. I was forced to pay hourly, every day, unless I wanted to park in the free 500 series lots and rely on the notoriously unreliable shuttles.  

Even though I had one in-person class, I spent $161.20 on the parking meters, which are priced higher than anywhere else in Colorado Springs, despite using the same parking app, Park Mobile.  

With 5,600 parking spaces and over 11,000 students, the supply does not meet the demand. Many students agree, including Sydney Lanier and Mary Tucker, two freshman residential nursing students.  

“There just aren’t enough spots … And the spaces that do exist go to waste, like the fuel-efficient zone in Alpine, which is almost always empty,” Lanier and Tucker agreed.  

Jim Spice, the executive director of parking and transportation, and Matthew Beckwith, who will be taking over the position, say the prices that students pay for permits and hourly parking are fair and necessary.  

“A large chunk of what [parking services] is paying for is to build and maintain parking lots. Parking lots are very expensive … the two garages on campus, Gateway and Alpine garages, cost around $25 million to build, plus another $25 million to finance them … We will be paying those off until 2042… with an average bond payment of $2 million per year until 2037, when balloon payments of up to $6 million begin,” Spice and Beckwith said.  

Without a doubt, this is a massive expense. It is important that parking services collects enough revenue to go into their reserves to pay off the financing on track. However, with an annual revenue of over $3 million for the 2023-2024 academic year, parking is raking in money, according to their annual report.   

According to this same report, the reserves have over $6 million in them, increasing anywhere between $600,000 and $1.4 million per year. In theory, by 2037, when the balloon payments begin, the reserves should have over $18 million, giving them plenty legroom to make these higher payments.  

Though parking lots are expensive to build and maintain, there is a shortage of spaces, as every student knows. If there was a parking garage on the opposite side of the 222 and 224 lots outside of the library and Centennial, there would be thousands of additional parking spaces for students and staff.  

If students are going to have to pay so much to park on campus because of parking services’ expenses, it should be worth their money by having more accessible parking options.  

Parking in lot 224. Photo by Lillian Davis.