Earlier this fall, drivers across campus were hit with another parking pass price hike—and the increases aren’t expected to stop any time soon.

For the majority of annual passes, which include full-time yellow (general parking), brown (South 40), blue (Village) and green (Lofts) passes, prices rose to $624. This represents a $69 increase from last year’s price of $555.

Sam Smathers | Student Life

Washington University offers a variety of parking permits that they make available to faculty, staff and students. This year, the majority of parking pass prices saw an increase of $69, bringing their prices to $624.

With the University’s ever-increasing tuition and other related costs, many students and staff report that expensive parking passes are a financial burden and prohibit them from driving to campus. As parking lots are replaced by an underground garage for the recently-announced expansion on the east side of campus, parking officials expect permit prices to continue to increase.

Nicholas Stoff, the director of Parking & Transportation Services, explained that the annual price increase was due to the recent installation and maintenance of garages, which are more expensive than surface parking lots. The new garages are the result of ongoing construction and expansion across the University.

“Being landlocked, we tend to build on our surface lots, which means we have to put up garages or put below-grade garages, and that tends to be more expensive than maintaining just surface lots. So, unfortunately, the parking rates are going up and will continue to increase in the coming years to support that,” Stoff said.

The University has also made security enhancements, such as improved lighting, more cameras and fresh coats of paint to existing parking lots. Stoff said that the costs of maintaining and improving parking lots are greater than the revenue generated by parking permit sales, and that the University tries to avoid relying on that revenue to cover maintenance costs.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton said that increased parking prices have been part of an overall plan to reduce demand for parking permits and individual car usage.

“If you study economics, higher prices probably mean lower demand. But we’ve done a couple things here that, over time, are lowering demand for people to have automobiles,” Wrighton said. “One very significant move was to provide everyone who is a full-time student or a benefits-eligible staff member a free pass on the entire metro system. So that’s led to lower demand. We have a lot of stops at Washington University.”

Parking & Transportation Services offers alternative options that might be more appealing to community members who cannot afford to park a car on campus. These include a $15 annual parking permit on West Campus, the Enterprise CarShare system, Campus2Home shuttles and the previously mentioned U-Pass program for the MetroLink and MetroBus.

“We realize that parking is expensive or has gotten expensive and will continue to get expensive, and we have tried to come up with some options to make it not be a necessity to necessarily have your car on campus,” Stoff said.

Wrighton also said that alternative options like the Enterprise CarShare will likely be more cost-efficient for However, even with these alternative options, many on campus still expressed concerns about increasing parking permit prices. Sophomore Kaitlyn Schwalber felt that the price of a permit might prevent many people who might need to park on campus from doing so.

“I am really concerned by parking prices on Wash. U.’s campus because I think it definitely limits the type of people who can park here,” Schwalber said.

The issue is not limited to students. Several faculty and staff members around the Danforth campus, who declined to be quoted due to job security issues, said that they have resorted to finding alternative transportation options such as the MetroBus or getting dropped off by family members to avoid high parking costs.

Senior Jeremy Sandler expressed frustration that, with Wash. U.’s high tuition and lack of guaranteed on-campus housing, high parking fees add an unnecessary financial burden on students who need to drive to campus.

“We are already paying [the University] $60,000 a year in tuition, and a lot of people can’t even manage that, so what they’re basically saying to us is, ‘Hey, we already know that you’re pouring all of your money into your education, but you also need to pay $600 more to even get to that education from where you live because we don’t guarantee you housing on-campus anymore,’” Sandler said.

The current plan is open to change, however.

“If we find ourselves down the road needing more parking, we have some other options we can explore, like adding to what we call the Snow Way garage,” Wrighton said.