Parking ticket money: where does it go?

Students on campus are no strangers to parking tickets. In one year, NC State Transportation earned $600,000 from citations. Where did all of that money go? 

From July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, Transportation earned $600,000 in citation revenue, said Holt Craven, assistant director of finance for NC State Transportation. However, in an email, Craven said that according to state law, the department is only allowed to keep 20% of that money, while the rest goes to the State Public School Fund. The 20% the department keeps from citations are allocated to various expenses such as personnel, repairs, technology, services and parking construction. 

Although the department was still able to keep $120,000 of the $600,000, it actually loses money having to monitor parking and hand out citations. 

“I think that one of the largest misconceptions about NC State Transportation is that we issue tickets in order to make money,” Craven said. “We actually lose money by enforcing. If Parking had its way, we wouldn’t write any tickets, but the fact of the matter is we have to write tickets, and we do that to protect our customers.”  

With more and more students getting admitted to NC State every year, Transportation is always looking for ways to expand parking on campus. However, Craven said the issue is more dynamic than that. He said NC State is constantly losing and gaining parking spaces. For example, NC State is looking to expand in some parts like  Varsity Drive but other areas such as the Innovation District will lose parking spaces as changes take place around campus.

Despite students’ wishes for NC State to expand their parking more and more, Craven said creating new parking space close to campus is expensive. 

“A parking lot space is about $10,000 to $12,000 a space, a parking deck space is about $30,000 to $35,000 a space and an underground parking space is about $60,000 a space” Craven said.

Craven said Transportation’s only revenue comes from parking permits and student transit fees, which is often why the cost of parking permits increases. When big projects come up and they need to raise money to pay for them, prices of permits go up.

Because of this, Craven said the department is more focused on managing the spaces that already exist instead of expanding and constructing new ones.

Demar Bonnemere, communications manager for Transportation, said due to Transportation’s limits with parking, they try to promote modes of transportation beyond driving cars. 

“Students can carpool … [and] we also promote other buses besides the Wolfline, so if you live off campus, you can take the GoRaleigh buses or the GoTriangle buses,” Bonnemere said.

NC State has really amped up its focus on developing micromobility options on campus with a heavy emphasis on biking. In August, 2022, NC State announced a partnership with micromobilty company Spin for 300 e-scooters and 50 e-bikes to be placed around campus for students to use. 

Bonnemere said NC State is also working on developing infrastructures for bikes owned by students around campus.

“If we see there is an issue of bikes being parked out of compliance, we will throw up some temporary racks in that vicinity, and once those people start parking there, we realize this is what we needed and put up those permanent racks [that we purchased],” Bonnemere said.

To learn more about parking on campus, check out NC State University Transportation’s website, transportation.ncsu.edu.