Rutgers rakes in nearly $5 million from parking violations

Rutgers University rakes in nearly $5 million from parking violations each year and dishes out more summonses per driver compared to nine other major public colleges in New Jersey.

On the New Brunswick campus, the school issues about 5.5 tickets per driver on average — a total of about 90,000, according to parking records from the last three year’s obtained by MyCentralJersey.com. From June 2014 to June 2015, the school brought in $4,907,220 from parking citations.

Meanwhile, nine other public universities in the state issue significantly less.

READ: Tuition, fees at Rutgers University going up again

READ: Rutgers police get 14 body cameras

READ: Rutgers switches beverage provider

All eight colleges issue around one ticket or less per driver. At the lowest end of the spectrum, William Paterson University distributes about 0.12 tickets per driver on average. The school issued 1,132 citations in 2015— 71 times less than Rutgers.

But the high number of parking tickets that Rutgers issues is largely a result of the framework of the five campuses, says Jack Molenaar, head of the Department of Transportation at Rutgers.

“When they set up the campus, they said ‘Let’s have five campuses and give students classes on all five campuses.’ And, it’s all separated by a river,” Molenaar said. “Now we try to make it work. That’s what I’ve been dealing with.”

Thanks to its policies and campus structure, Princeton University doesn’t issue any parking tickets.

Unlike Rutgers’ five campuses sprawled across 2,688 acres, Princeton’s smaller layout and nearby graduate housing makes it easier for students to walk to class. And as per university policy, it is mandatory for undergraduate students to live on campus.

“We are a totally different entity than Rutgers and our programs are very different,” said Kim E. Jackson, director of Transportation and Parking Services.

The Rutgers-Newark campus, located in a more urban, 38-acre setting, issued 4,789 tickets in 2015— 1/19th of the New Brunswick campus.

“Newark has almost no parking tickets. The Newark campus often runs out of parking. A student could buy a parking permit but not be able to find parking,” Molenaar said. “In New Brunswick, there’s enough parking, but people are too lazy to walk far distances.”

Rutgers’ Physical Master Plan, which aims to make bussing and traveling between the New Brunswick campuses more efficient, might have an affect on student parking habits.

The 20-year plan includes a pedestrian foot bridge between Livingston and College Avenue campus and new transportation hubs down George Street. These changes may cut the number of yearly parking violations by making it easier for drivers to park on their designated campus and travel by foot or bus to their destination.

Last year, Rutgers issued 2,603 violations to drivers who parked on an unauthorized campus and raised $52,060 from this specific violation.

Molenaar, however, doubts the Physical Master Plan will put a dent in the number of parking tickets distributed by the school because the most prevalent ticket is the ‘No Permit’ ticket. In 2015, Rutgers issued 37,885 ‘No Permit’ tickets and brought in $2,841,375 from the violation.

“Students are just not buying permits,” he said. “Permit sales have been the same for the past 10 years.”

From 2007 to 2008, 13,300 student permits were sold. Now, eight years later and with increased enrollment, only 1,000 more student permits were bought.

And as permit sales remain stagnant, the fines have become steeper.

The price for not displaying a hangtag was $10 in 2008, but is now $25— more than double. A $100 fraudulent registration ticket was half that amount in 2008, and this pattern of rising ticket costs in an eight year span holds true for 10 of 17 parking citations.

A student who skips out on buying a permit could face several fines, such as $25 for an unregistered vehicle or $75 for not displaying a permit.

A commuter parking pass now costs between $165 and $320 annually and a resident permit is $230 annually— meaning it could be cheaper for students to risk a ticket than to pay for a permit.

Molenaar said the school is looking into adopting License Plate Recognition (LPR) in the next few years to allow officers to quickly spot an illegally parked car.

LPR is a technology that uses character recognition to read license plates. Officers issue citations to cars that do not appear in a registration database.

“A security car would drive up and down the parking decks with a camera attached to it,” Molenaar said. “The camera would scan cars’ license plates to see if they are authorized to park there.”

The system would be modeled after a similar program at University of Maryland, where the school spent $40,000 per security vehicle to adopt the technology in 2011. The university scrapped the need for 18,000 hangtags, saved close to $100,000 and saw a jump in parking compliance."

Editor's note: This story was updated on Monday, Aug. 8, to specify the time period parking fines were reviewed for the universities.