CREDIT: ALEX ALLAN
Parking on campus is expensive, and with little improvements being made to on-campus parking, where is all that money going?

There is a lot I do not understand about Fanshawe’s parking. The London Campus has different parking places located all around the school. There are general parking admissions for the day that cost $5. Don’t be fooled if you think this is a good deal, because if you add this up over eight months, you are looking at adding $800 or more to your budget.

I was finally able to purchase parking in one of Fanshawe’s reserved parking lots after waiting for a year. The reserved parking costs $342 for two terms. I went through the most confusing process to get this parking as well. I got an email asking for information about which campus I will be attending. I gave the information, but they followed up stating that they only needed to know if I was going to be staying in residence.

The people in the parking office mentioned that they do this to separate you from the lottery parking you can get if you are in residence.


I’m not complaining about the reserved parking price, but I do feel for the people that will have to pay for general parking from Monday to Friday. I was one of those students that had to pay $5/day for parking. Plus, if you leave the campus for lunch or for other circumstances you have to pay for general parking again that same day when coming back.

The general parking gets full fast at the start of the fall semester too. If you can’t find a spot, you end up parking at spots on campus where you have to pay the toll. These parking spots cost $6 for only two hours of parking. If you want to have a full-day parking spot, you will have to pay $12 at these parking spots. In my opinion, this is way too much for a college student who’s already living off a small income.

The parking security is always driving around campus as well. You have to be careful with them because they will give you a $20 parking ticket if you fail to pay or if you parked your car overnight. What grinds my gears about all of this is, where are the improvements in parking?

I see cars every day in the lots getting tickets and also the majority of general parking is always full.

Here is the example of why I don’t understand that we see no improvements on parking. Let’s say the London Campus has around 400 spots for general parking. If all of these students came Monday to Friday for the academic year, that would total $800/student. So $800 x 400 parking spots would equal roughly $320,000/week.

This example is hypothetical, since the parking office did not provide me with any exact numbers when I contacted them. I’m giving context to how frustrating this is for students. Keep in mind that I am only giving an example for the general parking price. It’s a rough idea of how much the school is making and we are yet to see any improvements to parking.
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