Cost to park on Boston Avenue: $0. Fee to pay Tufts for parking in the wrong place: $15. Price of a parking decal for one semester in a lot across campus: $220.
For Tufts students who choose to bring their cars to campus, high gas prices and endless winter maintenance aren't the only costs. But compared to those at other Boston-area schools, Tufts' parking decal prices may seem cheap: Boston University charges $943.50 for two semesters, and Harvard demands anywhere from $1,325 to $1,495 for the year.
The $440 car-owning Tufts students spend to park their cars on campus each year is only the beginning of the financial burden they may face, however.
According to the Department of Public Safety's Supervisor of Administrative Services Kristin Gronberg, Tufts issues between 9,000 and 10,000 parking tickets every year. Every ticket ranges from $15 (for parking in the wrong lot) to $65 (for parking in a handicapped parking spot).
The most common offense for which students are ticketed? "Not having a proper decal for that particular parking area," Gronberg said.
She added that she doesn't think most students ticketed for this offense are simply making an innocent mistake. "For resident students that have been here for more than the first month or two, it's not just accidental," Gronberg said. "It's hoping that they don't get caught. They think, 'I'm just going to run inside for a couple of minutes,' but they end up getting a ticket."
Senior Alexis Liistro is one example of the most common type of parking regulation violator. During her sophomore year, Liistro said she accumulated "approximately $400 worth of tickets."
"They were usually from Tufts police because I refused to park where I was supposed to," she said.
Jim Kotzuba, Somerville's director of traffic and parking, echoed Gronberg. He said that permit violations are one of the main parking issues around Tufts on Somerville streets.
With so many tickets landing on students' windshields every year, there is a substantial amount of money flowing to Tufts' Public Safety Department. While Gronberg could not provide precise numbers at press time, if each of Tufts' 9,000 citations was a $15 ticket, then the Public Safety department would have an income of $135,000 each year.
Where does all that money go? "It goes into our budget to be able to pay for various upkeep projects - when we need new signs for lots, when we need some work done, when we need painting on the streets, or to make new handicapped parking areas," Gronberg said.
Somerville's parking tickets may have a more damaging effect on students' tight budgets: The city's tickets range from $15 to $200.
"We had an increase that went into effect in August," Kotzuba said. "It's meant to be a deterrent for people. We got a lot of complaints that the same cars wouldn't move on street-sweeping days, even though they kept getting tickets, so we raised the fine."
Despite the similarities in parking violations cited by Tufts and the City of Somerville, each department does deal with different situations. One problem that Somerville deals with that Tufts does not is that of parking near off-campus houses.
"A major thing is that we get a lot of parking too close to an intersection," Kotzuba said. "[Around Tufts,] it's because a lot of those houses have a lot of people crammed in, and everyone has a car but only one parking spot, or not enough space to park at all."
Street cleaning is another Somerville-only issue. Whitfield Road is a Somerville city street between Packard Avenue and Curtis Street. It's the home street of a high number of Tufts students in fraternity housing, culture housing and private off-campus housing. Although it may look just like Talbot Avenue, different rules apply: cars cannot park on the right side of Whitfield Road on the first and third Tuesdays of every month because of street cleaning.
Obscure rules such as this one are often the reason students living on streets like Whitfield are ticketed. "The only ones I've gotten from Somerville are from when I forget to move my car on street cleaning days," Liistro said.
This memory lapse is not restricted to Jumbos: Kotzuba said that street-cleaning days yield a high number of tickets city-wide.
Another student had similar problems with the less well-known parking regulations. "I got one ticket from Somerville, for parking in front of my house for more than two days," junior Lau Kompel said. "It cost around $35, which is too much. I didn't do anything to hurt anybody - I was parked in front of my own house."
Kotzuba said that the 48-hour parking rule is more strictly enforced in the winter months, when unshoveled snow around cars can cause problems in narrow streets. "If people don't shovel out their cars, you can't get down the street," he said.
Both Tufts and the cities of Medford and Somerville have appeal procedures for drivers who believe their citations were unjustified. Sometimes, though, students have no option but to recognize their mistakes and lose the money.
"I just paid my ticket, because I know it's a rule," Kompel said.
Are students who don't pay Tufts for their tickets the exception or the rule? "I'd say that about half pay on time and half don't," Gronberg said.
If students choose not to pay within the 14-day time period, she added, "we bill their bursar account."
