The price of Tufts Medford campus parking permits has increased by approximately 10 percent for the 2011-2012 academic year in order to better cover the cost of running the campus parking facilities, according to Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds.
The cost of a full-year permit for a residential student has increased from $500 last year to $550 this year, while a full-year permit for employees or commuting students has increased to $275 from $250, according to Louis Galvez III, administrative service coordinator for the Tufts Department of Public and Environmental Safety.
Half-year permits have increased in cost from $250 to $275 for residential students, and have been raised from $125 to $138 for employees and commuters, Galvez said. The cost of daily and monthly parking permits did not increase, according to Galvez.
The Department of Public and Environmental Safety, which includes parking operations, raised permit costs to better support Tufts' parking costs, Galvez said.
"The income that is being generated by the sale of permits for employees and students is not fully supporting Tufts' parking department," he said.
The Department of Public and Environmental Safety relies on funds from parking permits to cover the costs of its maintenance obligations, including running the Dowling Hall and Lower Campus Road parking garages, according to Reynolds.
Because only a minority of students purchased permits to park on campus, parking operations had to rely on the university for additional funds, according to Reynolds.
"We just thought it wasn't appropriate for the overall university to subsidize people who wanted to have parking on campus," Reynolds said.
This marks the first time that permit costs have changed since fall 2008, according to Support Services Manager Sheila Chisholm.
It is customary for the prices of parking permits to increase annually, Chisholm said. The university refrained from raising permit costs for the past three years because of the strained economy, Galvez said.
"Prior to the last three years, there was an annual increase of 4 to 5 percent," Reynolds said.
Had the university pursued its annual policy during this time, the prices of parking permits would be even higher now, he noted.
"It is relatively a small raise if you look at it across three years," Reynolds said.
Chisholm noted that Tufts was unique among its peer universities such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Boston College for holding the same prices of parking permits for those few years.
"Over the last three years, [the prices of] student permits have gone up every year for those institutions," Chisholm said.
Chisholm and Reynolds added that nearby schools charge more than Tufts in parking fees.
"Tufts compares favorably to surrounding universities," Chisholm said.
