The asphalt may not always be closer on the other side.
For years, Duke drivers have complained about major parking problems at the University, and many have been re-energized by the elimination of the Ocean parking lot. But every major university seems to struggle to satisfy parking demands, and each has crafted its own unique solution to the widespread problem.
The loss of the 450 Ocean spaces over the summer resulted in a major restructuring of parking on West Campus and raised several issues ranging from restricted lot access, to the proximity of parking to campus, to price to athletic parking.
Around the country, parking lot access and proximity usually depend on the layout of a campus, the environment that surrounds it and even individual schools' philosophies on social structure.
How a university finds parking for athletic events is largely affected by the popularity of its sports, the locations of its venues and the zoning around the venues.
Parking prices range greatly from one school to another, usually depending on the availability of spaces and other transportation services provided.
Laying out the land
Depending on the setup of each campus, the availability and proximity of parking spaces at universities varies greatly. In general, however, other schools' residence halls tend to be more spread out than those at Duke, allowing for many small parking lots rather than one centralized area like the Blue Zone.
While similar to Duke in size and percentage of students living on campus, Cornell, Stanford and Emory universities all have several student parking lots placed around campus. "Most parts of campus have no problems," said Greg Gleichman, parking and transportation program manager at Stanford.
But schools that are very large, such as the University of Virginia and North Carolina State University, or are urban, such as Yale University, have very limited on-campus parking for students.
"We place parking in a way to reduce traffic congestion," said Cathy Reeve, N.C. State's director of transportation, explaining that the school spreads its parking spaces throughout campus to eliminate severe traffic jams. Much like Duke, N.C. State reserves its closest spaces for faculty and administrators.
At Yale, which is located in downtown New Haven, Conn., students have little need or space for a car, said Joan Carol, Yale's manager of parking and transportation. Those that do have cars tend to park them in downtown parking garages and take buses to campus. And at UVa., students either park in perimeter lots on the edge of campus or, since half of upperclassmen live off campus, park in downtown Charlottesville and take university buses to campus.
One of the few aspects of parking that seems to be similar everywhere is that students who live off campus park on the perimeter of campus. "As our campus has grown, commuter parking has moved farther out," said Stanford's Gleichman. "People have adjusted." All such schools, however, tend to have parking shuttles that run every 10 minutes on average.
Who gets priority?
While residential undergraduates at Duke generally have parking spaces closer to campus than do graduate students, several schools, such as Stanford, give all students equal access to parking. At Stanford, all students have the same rights to parking passes and spaces. "We have a very egalitarian parking system," Stanford's Gleichman said.
Emory's parking system strives for even more equity; all members of the community have access to the same parking areas. "We like to mix students with faculty and staff," said Emory's director of parking, Bill Collier.
Other schools take the opposite approach. At Cornell, graduate students actually have priority over undergraduates when buying parking passes, although both groups park in the same lots.
Due primarily to space constraints, however, these parking privileges do not always reach everyone: Although Yale and Cornell allow freshmen to bring their cars to campus, Emory, Stanford, UVa., N.C. State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prohibit freshmen from parking for at least their first semester.
Decks and garages
The existence of parking decks and garages is something that is less consistent among universities: Although large schools such as N.C. State and UNC have several parking structures, equally large UVa. does not.
Emory has seven parking decks, while Stanford has none. Cornell-which has a garage near its football stadium-has made a conscious effort to avoid building parking structures, largely because they can cost $15,000 to $30,000 per space, said Cornell's Assistant Director for Commuter and Parking Services Carl Cohen.
"We have as an institution made a decision to not invest in parking garages," Cohen said.
One of the most unpopular aspects of the Duke parking system-the use of undergraduate spaces for home football games-seems to be unique to this university. At both UVa. and UNC, lots must be cleared before home games, but those lots are used for employee parking and tend to be empty anyway on nights and weekends. Athletic parking at Stanford is mainly at an arboretum-a dirt lot that is otherwise open space. Other schools seem to either have less of a demand for athletic parking or stadiums that are not near campus.
The price of parking
Since many universities, including Duke, have self-supporting parking systems, their parking prices are largely determined by how expansive their parking systems are. At Yale, where on-campus student parking is scarce, bringing a car to school for a year costs between $436.50 and $858.60 depending largely on proximity to campus, while non-students pay between $45.75 and $79.25.
At the other extreme, parking at Stanford costs between $30 and $99 for students and $30 to $108 for non-students. And Cornell, whose parking situation is perhaps the most similar to Duke's, charges residential students $276.29 to $357.71, commuting students $273.57 to $552.24 and faculty and staff one of six prices from free to $591.45.
Duke charges $160 for on-campus students and between $80 and $396 for off-campus students.
Many institutions react to such challenges by moving away from parking entirely.
"We try to reduce our need to maintain large amounts of parking," said N.C. State's Reeve. "More and more universities are going towards public transportation."
At Cornell, for example, parking officials urge people to purchase a $120 pass that provides access to a county-wide bus system. For those who need to drive, Cornell offers discounts of up to 75 percent for car-poolers.
Other schools are getting even more creative in trying to reduce car use. Within the next few weeks, N.C. State officials plan to initiate use of electric-powered, golf-cart sized vehicles for administrators to get from one area of campus to another.
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