By: Bob Browand

-We have updated this blog post to include the rates that were officially approved by the UH System Board of Regents on March 8, 2018.

This week is part two of the Parking Preview for 2018-2019 blog series where we're covering the major changes coming to Parking and Transportation next year. This series includes:

This week we’re delving into the details of the new rates, including how rates are determined, where the money goes and some solutions for faculty, staff and students who want to save money.

New rates

We are bringing the proposed rates to the Board of Regents for approval on Mar. 8. Our department is completely self-funded, which means we do not receive any tuition or fees that students pay to the university. That leaves permit sales as our primary source of revenue. We worked to find all changes we could make next year in order to cut this price increase as much as possible. This includes reviewing our policies and procedures to identify areas where we can cut costs and increase revenue from non-parking permit sources. After these changes were made, we were able to reduce the price increase to an average of 9%. Although no price increase is ideal, we hope this at least demonstrates that prices are never raised without consideration of all other options to cover costs. The cost of doing business is steadily increasing and in order to continue to provide and improve upon our services we unfortunately need to raise rates in order to sustain our operations. Our program is growing and we’re even working to incorporate UH Sugar Land within our operation.



Where your dollars go The main reason that prices are going up this year is to pay for garages and increased shuttle service. Garages Garages are essential to meet the needs of our growing campus because they are more efficient than surface lots at using the limited land we have downtown in a major city. However, garage debt makes up over 40% of our annual costs. In fact, if permit prices actually covered their true cost, garage permits for faculty, staff and students would be at least $1,000 each year. Garages five is on the way, adding about 2,400 parking spaces and we’ve already started planning our garage six. Road construction to begin garage five will start this summer. We’ll post updates about these garages and more on our Project Updates page.

Campus Shuttles