Students find creative ways to dodge high parking costs at Algonquin College

Abbey Treanor, a fourth-year interior design student at Algonquin College, believes that parking prices have risen too high for the average student trying to pay their tuition.

“I can’t afford to spend money all the time. I already pay for tuition,” said Treanor.

With rising costs of tuition, external costs of her program and the lack of time she has to work because of class scheduling, Treanor is adamant that the steep parking prices should drop. The average price of tuition has increased 28 per cent across Ontario in the last five years, according to the Canadian Federation of Students. Ontario now has the highest tuition cost across Canada.

“Ottawa is expensive,” said Treanor.

However, Treanor may have found a workaround for some students who are trying to avoid the daunting parking lot price tag. She split the costs of a single parking pass between friends last year, since the college allows motorists to register multiple licence plates under the same pass.

“We were only overlapped for 14 minutes,” said Treanor when asked if she had received any tickets from overlapping, when two different vehicles were parked at the same time using the same single parking pass.

According to Treanor another method she uses is more of a risk-or-reward approach — not paying at all. While the campus does have security issuing tickets, according to Treanor, sometimes they don’t catch you.

Treanor said she doesn’t pay for daily parking at the college “more times than not.”

Treanor said she’s only received three parking tickets for around $80 each in the last four years she spent at Algonquin and doesn’t plan on paying for a parking pass in the future. She said it’s worth paying a couple of tickets compared to the parking pass fees.

The yearly parking pass at the college ranges from $799 to nearly $1,100, monthly passes range from $129 to $192, weekly passes are $34 to $43 and daily passes are from $4 to $18. The prices depend on the lot, the time of day and the day of the week.

Grace Miller, a former Algonquin College student from the police foundations program, found a creative way to dodge the college’s parking police.

Miller decided to get a job at Kettlemans in College Square right beside campus. She would park her car out front of her work and walk over to campus. Regularly students are given fines if caught parking in College Square.

“A good chunk of the reason I worked at Kettlemans was to avoid the parking fees and to pay for small things around school,” said Miller.

“Even after I was done working there, I would still park at Kettlemans.”

Miller could not afford the high prices of parking and she believes it is completely unjust that students must pay to park.

“Kind of ridiculous,” Miller said.

“People spend so much on courses that they shouldn’t have to worry about parking.”

Rylee Reid, an advertising and marketing student in her first year at Algonquin College, has decided to bite the bullet and pay for parking. She pays $14 each day to park on campus and wishes she bought an annual pass at the beginning of the term.

“Yeah, after being caught a couple times with parking tickets I had no choice but to just buy the yearly pass,” Reid said.

“It’s insane how much the college charges, even with the amount of open spaces there are.”