The city of Eugene has various degrees of parking violations. On the low end, one could receive a $25 citation. On the high end, a violation can cost up to $400. The most common violation that prompts a citation is an Overtime Violation when a vehicle is parked in a designated spot past the legal time limit.
Eden Henry, a fourth-year UO student in the Robert D. Clark Honors College, has had run-ins with Eugene parking enforcement. “I’ve gotten $25 [tickets] once weekly before from the city,” Henry said. All of those tickets occurred on or near UO’s campus.
The fine for an Overtime Violation is $25. While some of the other violations will cost double if you violate the parking ordinance again, Overtime Violations do not.
The process of paying a parking ticket through the city is fairly user-friendly. There are options to pay online, through the mail or in person. The process to contest a ticket is less simple. The only way to contest a parking violation is to request a parking ticket review by completing a Parking Review Form, which can be obtained at the Eugene Municipal Court in downtown Eugene.
Public streets around UO are monitored by the City of Eugene and its own parking enforcement team, who have a map to show you where metered and hourly parking can be found near campus. UO manages its own lots and private roads with its own transportation services team.
This can cause confusion for some students looking for a spot while in a hurry.
John Freudenthal, a 2023 UO graduate, collected a ticket due to what he said was misleading and confusing signage in a UO-monitored parking lot.
“Over the summer, I was running late and decided to park in the lot [between the] EMU and Straub Hall. I was stumped because the lot used a completely different parking permit system than when I lived in LLC during my freshman year,” Freudenthal said. “ It was all around confusing but I figured out how to use the online system and paid for a couple of hours. To my surprise, I still got a $50 ticket as the lot was a specific permit only.” Freudenthal said he took pictures of the signage to argue his case and get his ticket reduced.
A fourth-year student in the SOJC at UO has paid “well into $500” in parking tickets from their first year on campus in 2020 to this year, their last at UO. Speaking in anonymity the student revealed their proclivity to procure parking tickets comes from a mix of needing a spot to quickly park near or on campus and confusion with how to park even after purchasing a permit. “One time I got one (a parking ticket) in the lot behind Rennies when I was inside for less than 15 minutes picking up food.” They shared how their parking ticket collection began during their first term on campus. “My freshman year I had the overnight pass for the lots that are now B-East and they (UO) still gave me tickets. They said that I was in the wrong spots in those lots.”
UO’s transportation services website has a catalog of parking regulations and procedures. With over 64 bullet points, 13 subheaders, six sections and two headings, it’s a lot to go through when you’re in a rush to find a spot on a campus where parking spots are hard to come across.
Parking can be a hot-button issue each time it’s discussed. The UO’s Campus Plan mentions an “assumed responsibility to provide a reasonable level of affordable parking for students, faculty, staff and visitors while preserving the quality of the campus and adjacent neighborhood environments and encouraging the use of alternative modes of transportation.” In short, parking lots will still be few and far between. Trees, green spaces and easy-to-walk/bike/scoot/skate distances between buildings are expected to, in the foreseeable future, take priority over new parking developments.
