Having your license, for many teenagers and young adults, is an exciting privilege that opens an endless amount of doors and new opportunities, but what is the point of going out on your own into the world if there is never a place to park?

With an estimated 4,405 available parking spots, students with cars across the UMD community are expressing their frustrations about almost everything involving parking on campus.

Senior Alia Kvaternik has been living with UMD’s parking since her freshman year and understands the anger that can come along with it.

“When I was a freshman, we all the time would dread going out or going to our cars because it wasn’t even a [confirmed thing] of if we got to park in the green lot when we got back.”

Green lot parking is essential for the students living on campus with a car, due to it allowing overnight parking. As expressed by Kvaternik, students find it hard to get those spots back or get green spots close enough to their apartments.

Location is not the only complaint that students around campus have about parking. Over the last few years, prices for all the permits have been on the rise.

“Since I was a freshman, the parking passes have gone up and it really baffles me…it was a lot different than it was three years ago...I wanna say [the price] was around $380 or so,” Kvaternik said — the price for a green pass this year is $485.

Car owners living on campus are not required to buy a parking pass for the school. Because this is not a requirement, lots of students who are trying to save that money end up parking on the streets overnight instead.

Students who have decided to utilize street parking might start to run into trouble at the beginning of November due to the option of street parking being taken away until the spring.

“The only thing I feel bad about is that students without permits have no chance of parking on the street [after] Nov. 1. There seems to be an awful lot of [street parking] this year,” said Mike, a member of the UMD parking staff who declined to give his last name.

The city of Duluth eliminates overnight street parking due to winter plowing. This causes a high amount of stress among the students who have been taking advantage of that free parking since the start of the semester.

“I get here at 5:30 in the morning and there’s no parking on the street. That would be great if the city could knock that off and give all the students a fair shot at some street parking,” said Mike.

Although permit and street parking are some of the more popular choices for parking at UMD, with the amount of emotional stress they are causing students, they might not be the right choice for everyone. A few other options provided for students are metered parking and the pay lot.

The pay lot is overall more affordable, averaging out to only a dollar an hour, but the metered parking is more popular because it is closer to the school. The meters charge only $1.25 for every hour — the average time purchased is around an hour and a half.

According to the Transportation and Parking Services 2020-2021 annual report, metered parking made a total of $73,231 in revenue and had around 3,349 users who paid by the Duluth pay app alone.

Also, a special feature added to the UMD meters allows a four-minute grace period for students to have enough time to make it back out to their cars to pay the fee.

“When the meters run out of time, there’s an extended four minutes before they officially expire. People have too much reason not to have time on it,” said Mike.

After weighing out all of these parking options, some students are still not happy about the lack of close parking and the prices they still find themselves paying for passes.

“It seems like they are just trying to pull more money where they can from us,” Kvaternik said.

Mike responded to students’ frustrations and about parking. He wants to get the point across that the TPS is not here to harass or attack students; they are simply here to make student life as smooth as possible.

“I think a lot of people think we are here to make money off them and everything,” said Mike. “Parkings not any part of the tuition. We pay for all the plowing and pay for all the services rendered without burdening students. We’re here to help more than we are here to hurt.”

Those are lots of opportunities for students that have decided they need a car when attending college, whether they are happy about those options or not. But TPS staff Lisa Norr hopes to see a decline in cars on campus altogether and an increase in students participating in more sustainable ways to get to school.

“Anyway that we can cut down on the number of vehicles here is the way that I’m hoping we will make people change their way of thinking rather than, ‘Let’s focus on getting more here,’ let’s focus on getting less here,” Norr said.

UMD has a large number of resources for students who want to take advantage of sustainable transportation and who might not be thrilled about actually parking on campus.

Throughout the campus, there are bike racks for students who choose to ride, there is UMD Safewalk Escort which is a program that sends people to walk with other students if they don’t feel comfortable doing it alone and of course the Duluth Transportation Authority buses are a huge part of alternative student transportation.

The University of Minnesota Duluth is a part of the DTA’s U-Pass program which offers any UMD student, with their student ID, unlimited rides to anywhere in the Twin Ports area.

“Many students don’t even realize they can ride the bus for free,” Norr said.

Norr is not the only person who wants to see a massive decrease in cars on campuses. There are many universities around the U.S. that have the same goals for creating a more eco-friendly campus.

According to an article written by the Los Angeles Times, “public and private schools are going green — adopting sustainable practices that conflict with the push to multiply parking spaces and placate solo drivers.”

Just like at UMD, students are complaining around the country that there are not enough parking spaces at their universities, and as opposed to adding those expensive spots, colleges are taking a different approach that will help out students and the environment.

Schools from coast to coast are starting to provide carpooling projects, better bus access and even partnerships with Uber to help get people where they need to go in an easy and sustainable way.

UMD hopes to add more of these environmentally friendly options for students and reduce their carbon footprint by the year 2025.

“I hope by the time I’m done working at UMD I’ll have made a difference and assisted with that,” Norr said.

The endless war on parking at universities seems like an unfixable issue. With the new choices provided not just for UMD students but college students across the globe, the war will hopefully resolve itself and conclude in a more sustainable way.

Parking at UMD: How do students and transportation staff feel about the parking situation on campus?