Some colleges and universities around the country restrict students from bringing vehicles to school to alleviate parking and traffic problems and to promote an academically focused atmosphere.
While Brigham Young University does not have a parking shortage on campus, traffic congestion and air quality are affected by vehicles traveling to the university, according to two BYU professors. Methods of controlling vehicles elsewhere may be applicable:Stiff parking fees
Some universities use high parking fees to discourage students from bringing vehicles on campus. At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville an on-campus parking permit for two semesters costs $134 and an off-campus permit, for students driving to school, costs $86.
Parking fees at the University of California at Berkeley are $60 month. The Alameda County Transit system offers cut-rate student bus passes - $75 per semester of five months. Faculty and staff also get a discount on transit passes.
The city of Berkeley also designates a two-mile radius around the campus as a residential-permit parking area; parking is limited to two hours unless a vehicle has the required permit.
At Princeton University in New Jersey, most parking lots are a shuttle ride from campus. Vehicles are allowed to park near buildings only for unloading and loading. And, parents of freshman students are encouraged not to let their children bring vehicles to the university.
At BYU, some lots do not require any kind of parking permit. Annual fees are low: an off-campus student permit is $15, motorcycles are $10, on-campus single students pay $7.50, graduate students pay $30, and faculty and staff pay nothing.
No cars on campus
At Berkeley, students who live in on-campus dormitories cannot have vehicles on campus unless granted an exception by an appeals committee.
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, prohibits undergraduates, with a few exceptions, from having motor vehicles in the Oxford area. The no-car rule, which the university considers a "rule of conduct," has been upheld in U.S. district court.
The rule is aimed at reducing environmental problems, promoting the university's academic mission and leveling class differences among students, according to Jim Michael, an attorney who represented the university in defending the rule.
Oxford has approximately 15,000 residents; the university's student population is also about 15,000. More than half the students live in on-campus dormitories, Michael said.