Why High Schools Should Rethink Student Parking Lots

The student parking lot at Homestead High School takes up a large footprint on campus.

When we picture a typical public high school in California, a sprawling sea of asphalt filled with student cars is almost always part of the picture. For decades, the presence of a student parking lot has been treated as an educational necessity—a rite of passage for teenagers and a convenience for parents.

But what if we told you that providing parking for high school students is actually optional?

We need to examine the hidden price tag attached to these parking lots. When we peel back the pavement, we find that subsidized student parking creates significant financial burdens, safety hazards, and social inequities that our community can no longer afford to ignore.

The Real Estate We Waste

In the Bay Area, land is one of our most precious resources. Yet, we dedicate a staggering amount of it to the temporary storage of automobiles. A study by the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley found that at new high schools in California, the land area devoted to parking is approximately equal to 92% of the land area devoted to school buildings.  (The remaining uses of the land are athletic fields, drop-off lanes, sidewalks, and courtyards).

For every acre used for classrooms, labs, and libraries, nearly another acre is paved over for cars. 

This is land that could instead be used for educational buildings, green space, and athletic facilities. Devoting land to parking lots contributes to the "heat island" effect, raising local temperatures and generating toxic stormwater runoff that pollutes our waterways.

Subsidizing the Affluent

Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth about student parking is that it functions as a regressive subsidy. Maintaining these lots—repaving, lighting, and securing them—is paid for by general school funds, i.e. taxpayer dollars. But who benefits?

Data show that high school drivers are statistically more likely to come from two-parent households with higher socioeconomic status and parents with college degrees. Conversely, minority students and those from lower-income families are significantly more likely to be non-drivers.

By pouring capital into parking infrastructure, the public school system is effectively subsidizing a private mobility choice that disproportionately benefits the most affluent students, while lower-income students engaging in walking, biking, or transit receive no comparable perk.

The Safety Hazard Next Door

We all want our environments to be safe, but high school parking lots are structurally high-risk environments. They combine high traffic volumes with the most inexperienced operators on the road: teenagers.

California currently has the second-highest number of fatal crashes involving young drivers in the nation.

The "dismissal rush" at the end of the school day creates a chaotic environment where novice drivers compete for space, increasing the risk of collisions with pedestrians and cyclists. Furthermore, the congregation of vehicles during drop-off and pick-up creates zones of high air toxicity due to idling engines, exposing developing lungs to dangerous pollutants like benzene and formaldehyde.

The "Zero-Price" Problem

Why do so many students drive to school? Because we pay them to.

In economics, this is known as the "zero-price problem". When we provide parking for free or for a nominal fee, we artificially lower the cost of driving. This economic incentive causes students to drive alone rather than carpool, bike, walk, or take VTA busses.

Homestead High School charges only $35 for an annual parking permit. Cupertino High School charges just $20. Compare that to the cost of a single night at prom, typically over $100.

If a student pays more for a prom ticket than they do for a whole school year’s worth of prime real estate to store their car, our pricing priorities are fundamentally broken.

The actual cost to construct and maintain a single parking space can run into the thousands of dollars. Charging $35—or nothing at all—sends a signal that driving is cheap and preferred, undermining any investments we make in safe routes to school or public transit. Our society makes driving so cool that even students who live close by and had been walking to school, switch to driving as soon as they get their driver's license. 

A Better Way Forward

The implicit subsidy of high school student parking lots unfairly puts financial burden on the public for the benefit of the affluent. Student parking lots are a concentrated area of dangerous driving behavior and noxious fumes.

This leads us to the conclusion that, if schools want to provide student lots, we must stop giving the space away. We should look to models like Minnetonka High School, which charges $330 for permits and heavily prioritizes carpools. There, a "Pool 1" permit requires four licensed drivers per vehicle to even be considered for a spot. Similarly, schools in Issaquah, WA, allow students to split permit fees among carpoolers to incentivize shared rides.

A good local example of discouraging driving to school is Los Altos High School. Students within a nearly 1 mile radius of campus are ineligible for a parking permit. In addition, the City of Los Altos enforces parking restrictions up to 1600 feet of campus. The result is that parking is dispersed to a wider area away from campus, reducing a mad car rush before and after school and improving safety for all.

If high schools continue to offer student parking, the cost of an annual permit must reflect the actual cost of that parking—including its impact on local traffic, land value, and maintenance. Revenue generated should be reinvested into universal transit passes or bike infrastructure, ensuring that mobility is equitable for all students, not just those with access to a car.

It is time to pave the way for a safer, greener, and fairer future for our students—by paving a little less of their campuses.

---

About the Author

Alon Golan is on the Board of Sunnyvale Safe Streets. He strongly believes in making the streets safe for all modes of transportation. In his spare time, he likes to think about how to fix the transportation problem in the US.