Last week I got into a Facebook argument with someone I consider a friend, about parking at the University of Maine. I hate on-line arguments. The nature of social media encourages pithy, cut-and-run comments, and I made one along the lines of: “The University provides free bus service, so quit whining about parking.”

Full disclosure: since 2007, I have worked as an adjunct professor of English at said university, and, as regular readers know, for the same period of time I have not owned a car. I’ve never paid for a parking permit. I can count the number of times I’ve driven to campus on the fingers of both hands and still have fingers left over to pull out my bus pass. But my comment was rude, and I’m sorry I succumbed to the temptation of posting it.

My friend’s opinion was that the University (and universities in general) charge their students too much in tuition and fees as is, and that paid parking is an added burden on already stressed budgets.

I’m going to try to be nice. I can empathize with someone working a low-paying job, just trying to make ends meet. I’ve been there. Fifty dollars a year can seem like a lot in those circumstances.

But the ongoing proliferation of cars is a threat to the global ecosystem. As leaders in scientific research, educational institutions have a special responsibility to lead the way out of the Late Automobile Age into a more benign and sustainable future. The University of Maine has been nationally recognized for its green initiatives. One of them is the program that provides free access to the local bus system for all students, faculty and employees.

Because we’ve spent the seven-plus decades since the Second World War building up car infrastructure and tearing down public transportation, many Americans, including those who attend and work at universities, have structured their lives around a culture of car ownership as necessity. We live in outlying towns and drive to malls and movies and supermarkets, and most of us drive to work. It’s a habit that’s hard to break.

The University of Maine’s approach is part carrot and part stick. The carrot is free transportation anywhere within the Community Connector bus system, an area stretching from Old Town to Hampden and across the Penobscot River to Brewer. The stick is a $50 annual parking fee, and a few restrictions on who can park where at what times.

But this doesn’t work for everyone. Evening students, employees with small children, long-distance commuters and others will still drive, and will continue to complain about paying to park. But even they reap the benefits. Every time someone decides to take the bus instead of drive, it frees up a parking space that would otherwise be occupied. The University of Maine does not have a problem of not enough parking. The University’s problem – shared with schools around the country and the world – is that too many people still want to drive.

Increased parking fees might persuade more people to ride the bus. But that approach will engender even more ill will from people stuck in a car culture they didn’t create. I would rather advocate for the carrot of extended bus hours.

Decades of advertising and infrastructure design have done their damage. Parking lots dominate campuses and suburbs, and still the public cries for more. Driving and car ownership are still seen as ubiquitous requirements, not just in America, but all over the world. A recent surge in gas prices brought Bulgarians out of their cars in anger, blocking roads and disrupting commerce all over the country.

Why should parking at your place of work be free? One might argue that most people have to drive to their jobs – but most people have to eat lunch, too, and few companies feed their employees for free in the middle of the day. If you bring your lunch, you can save money by not buying food at the company cafeteria. The same should be true of coming to work without a car – an incentive not to drive.

Indeed, a few employers offer “parking offsets” – small stipends in the paychecks of workers who don’t park at work. In practice, it amounts to the same thing as saving the $50 on the parking fee, but the employee perceives it as a reward rather than an expense.

Attitudes change slowly, but they do change. The long, slow work of undoing the damage wrought by the over-proliferation of automobiles is underway, in Orono and other university towns, one parking permit and one free bus ride at a time.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]