New Parking System Coming to a Rice Lot Near You

Under severe pressures created by long being an attractive island of virtually free parking—free, that is, for everyone except its own faculty, staff, and students—in a sea of high-priced parking facilities, Rice University will introduce a new parking system in fall 2002.

Some final details are still in flux, but a key point is that visitor parking is made less confusing by consolidating it into six more-easily found locations: more than 1,800 free spaces in two lots near Rice Stadium served by frequent shuttle buses and four paid lots near major visitor destinations. The paid visitor lots will be relatively inexpensive—75 cents to $1.50 per hour—and many colleges and university offices will be able to validate parking for invited guests. The changes also will allow better allocation of space to faculty, staff, and students. Student, faculty, and staff lots will be gated and accessed with the use of a card. For athletic and university-wide events such as commencement and homecoming, free parking still will be provided.

The new parking system is the result of a thorough internal parking study supplemented by the work of outside parking consultants Kimley-Horn, university professional staff, and the university standing committee on parking in consultation with various groups representing faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The recommendations were driven by several factors. One was a need to make parking self-supporting rather than relying on educational funds. Currently, more than $800,000 a year in educational funds subsidizes parking. Under the new plan, drivers, over a period of years, will assume the true cost of parking. A second factor is equity—while Rice faculty, staff, and students pay to park, nearly a million visitors each year do not. Also, many individuals whose destination is either the Texas Medical Center or Rice Village are now using Rice lots as a free-parking zone. And finally, parking demand on campus has outstripped supply. Not only does Rice continually welcome large numbers of people to campus, but to meet alumni, student, and faculty interest in preserving precious green space, new buildings intentionally have been built on surface parking lots, reducing the total number of available spaces.

More information on the new parking plan can be found at http://www.parking.rice.edu/.