USC’s Parking and Transportation Services sold approximately 21,000 parking permits for the fall 2024 semester — passes that guarantee their holders a spot in a campus parking garage or surface lot.
But, there are only 17,000 total parking spaces across campus.
Over 65% of the student body lives off-campus, requiring many to commute to USC by driving. Not every student opts to buy a garage pass; many instead choose to pay hourly parking fees.
With more pass holders than parking spaces, many commuters said they are left struggling to find spots in crowded lots and garages.
University Spokesperson Collyn Taylor said in a statement on behalf of Parking and Transportation Services that “it’s standard procedure to have more passes sold than spaces available,” and that “no garage is going to be full 100% of the time...capacity fluctuates."
Parking and Transportation performs "extensive research and data collection" to decide how many permits to sell, Taylor said.
Despite these assurances, some students have expressed frustration with crowded parking garages.
The Daily Gamecock interviewed 40 students to see what their thoughts were on university-provided parking. Sixty percent of students said they have trouble finding parking at least once per week, and 10% have trouble every day.
Student commuters have three parking options to choose from: garage, surface or metered. All three are accessible through paying daily parking fees as well as semester permits, but students frequently find these spaces completely full or completely empty, but reserved by the university.
“I would say (USC has) a really bad problem about (metered parking)," said Madison Burgess, a fourth-year criminal justice and women and gender studies student. "They like to reserve them a lot ... so we can't park there. There are times where entire lots are closed. Even here (Bull Street Garage), they sometimes reserve this entire lower section."
Because of USC's steady growth in enrollment and high percentage of off-campus students, it’s not uncommon for student commuters, such as fourth-year public health student Lexi Gross, to factor traffic jams and a search for parking into their commute.
“I always leave at least 30 minutes early to make it to class on time, because of traffic. I come three times a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I'd say every time I have trouble finding (parking),” Gross, who pays hourly for parking, said. "This year I don't have a bunch of classes on campus, and it's expensive to pay for the whole (parking pass)."
An annual parking garage permit costs $880, and at $1 an hour, off-campus students, such as fourth-year mass communications student Janey Ratto, see hourly garage parking as a cheaper alternative — and worth the risk of not being able to find a spot.
“Ultimately, I'm trying to save as much money as possible,” Ratto said. “I only have one class a day, and for four days, it ends up being … $8 a week. I do think it's less than if I were to pay for a parking pass, and I take the risk, because I'm not ready to (spend money on) a parking garage pass.”
University events, such as Family Weekend, often draw large crowds of drivers in need of parking. The university provided parking to visiting family members in Bull Street Garage free of charge, but at the cost of displacing many student commuters. Burgess said her experience finding parking on Family Weekend was “insane.”
Burgess could not find a parking spot in Bull Street Garage on Family Weekend, she said, and the full garage and added traffic made her late to class.
"There needs to be more information out there about where (families) can go and where they can park, and they shouldn't be able to park (in Bull Street Garage). This should just be for students, in my opinion, because it was a nightmare,” she said.
Parking and Transportation Services offers several resources to help students find parking, including an interactive map and Park USC, an app that helps students “navigate campus parking effortlessly” by allowing them to “easily locate available parking across the campus,” according to the app’s description.
However, not all students find the app as helpful as its description suggests.
“(Park USC) needs to be improved,” third-year economics and psychology student Keisha Kakooza said. "It doesn't tell you exactly where to go, like it gives you general directions, but you can't really know exactly where the parking lot or garage is."
When asked what could be done to improve on-campus parking, students offered a variety of ideas. Fourty percent advocated for decreasing the price of parking, and 23% of students, such as third-year theater student Kayla Barron, said they would consider buying garage passes if they were less expensive.
"It's horrible. I hate having to pay (hourly fees) everyday considering that I have to pay for food, pay for gas, pay for rent, all that," Barron said.
Limited parking, especially in areas central to campus, has caused students driven by their need to find a parking spot to act rashly, some students said. Second-year mechanical engineering student Sandra Weston said she witnessed an altercation between two drivers in Bull Street Garage.
“I saw one lady who was backing out, and there was a car coming in trying to take the space. The other car saw her backing out and tried cutting right in front of her when she wasn't fully out of the space, and he hit the front of her car. There was no damage. But they got out and had a bit of an argument … and it caused a huge amount of traffic,” Weston said.
Students said they feel that the current amount of parking provided is insufficient. Thirty-eight percent of students surveyed said that providing more garage and lot space would most effectively improve student parking.
Adding additional parking space is part of USC’s Master Plan, a 10-year project that aims to accommodate the university’s projected growth. University Architect Derek Gruner outlined plans to build new “mixed-use spaces,” for residential, commercial and parking purposes, within the next 10 years.
Three potential mixed-use sites that would add parking include Main Street, the Byrnes Building and the corner of Wheat and Main Streets, Gruner said.
The Master Plan intends to create additional space for student life, residence and academics, which “all create parking demands, and the vision in the master plan is that there be a parking structure at the heart of (those) sites with active uses wrapping that garage,” Gruner said.
City of Columbia Ordinance No. 2023-111 states that for every bed in a short-term rental (such as college dorms), two parking spaces must also be built. Gruner said the Master Plan will uphold this ratio, which USC currently maintains.
“We haven't planned the amount of square footage that we're going to build,” Gruner said. “Once we begin to get a handle on how much square footage and how many beds we're going to have, then we provide at the bare minimum the parking that's required in the ordinance, and hopefully a little more than that.”
Though parking is not one of the projects spearheading construction on the Master Plan, Gruner said students would eventually see development.
“What we do here is so complex, but I've come to adopt this belief that compelling, powerful ideas always find their place in time," Gruner said. "I have no doubt that Main Street (parking) is … going to find its place within this 10-year window of this master plan."