The high cost of free parking, chapter 29:
Raleigh high school students are upset about a plan to raise their yearly parking fee by $50, the News and Observer reports. It would go from $120 to $170 a year. In 2005, the Wake school board doubled the fee to $240 a year, but rescinded it after students complained. Charlotte-Mecklenburg students pay $25 a year. Durham students pay $75; Chapel Hill-Carrboro students pay $100.
No parking is free, it only looks that way. The cost of the land, the grading and the asphalt to pave school parking lots is absorbed by taxpayers. In 2006, a CMS architect told me each parking space the system builds costs $4,000 — not including the land cost. Those same taxpayers also shell out for a complete mass transit system for students only — school buses. (Note, school bus costs come from two different pots of public money: county and state.)
Call me heartless. My driver’s license-toting high school daughter would shriek if she knew I was writing this. But I think schools should offer less parking and charge more for it. Yes, it would probably cost more for high school bus routes, but maybe not that much more. They’ve got to hire drivers anyway, and drive the routes for the kids who do take the bus. Many of the buses end up with empty seats anyhow, because so many kids drive. (OK, OK, offer a “hardship” option to low-income students if they can prove to the principal they need to drive to school and can’t afford a higher parking fee.)
If parking cost more, more kids would walk, bicycle, take the school bus or a city bus, or carpool. The pocketbook talks.