Lot 1

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After the debacle of a Monday morning (and afternoon) of many struggling to register for parking through DOTS, it raised the question: Is the $481 students pay annually for parking worth it?

It’s not cheap. It’s equal to 5.9 percent of in-state tuition for next year, or 1.6 percent for out-of-staters. And when DOTS doesn’t operate at peak efficiency, it’s not hard to get furious quickly at how much money it takes out of our pockets in fees and tickets. That’s all fair.

READ MORE: Thanks DOTS; it took me four hours to register for parking

Even if you really don’t like DOTS, when it comes to on-campus parking, consider sticking with the devil you know instead of one you don’t. Many of our peers at the Big Ten’s 13 other institutions have things a lot worse:

Big Ten On-Campus Student Parking Rates

School

Cost (Annual Unless Otherwise Noted)

Indiana

$122

Purdue

$150

Ohio State

$153 to $690

Michigan State

$195 to $292

Rutgers

$210

Iowa

$279 to $558 per month (select free spaces available)

Nebraska

$405-$486 per nine months

Maryland

$481

Northwestern

$525

Minnesota

$540 to $1,050 per year *

Penn State

$640 or $288 per two semesters

Wisconsin

$653 to $1,199

Illinois

$660

Michigan

$664.10 (standard upperclassmen, on-campus rate)

*Totals have been cost-estimated by prorating.

It’s impossible to formulate an exact average annual rate for Big Ten universities.

Unlike ours, not every school has one uniform price for on-campus parking. And unlike ours, not every school charges in even 12-month increments. Some prices are harder to prorate than others. (Also, Indiana’s fees aren’t publicly available online, so I’ve grabbed a recent figure from IU’s student newspaper.)

However, even absent an apples-to-apples comparison point for every school in the league, it’s pretty plain to see that DOTS doesn’t bilk us for nearly as much as its counterparts do students elsewhere.

The table above represents my best effort over several hours of research to find standard rates across the Big Ten, and some of our peers have it pretty rough.

Our Badger friends in Madison, Wisc., can pay more than $1,000 to park on campus in a city that ranks 38th in the Americas in cost of living by the Consumer Price Index. At Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor (65th), students pay almost $200 more than we do.

Our campus is situated directly between No. 6 (Washington) and No. 37 (Baltimore). If you don’t count Rutgers as New York (you shouldn’t), the metro area surrounding College Park is pricier to live in than that of any other Big Ten school, including Northwestern in suburban Chicago.

With a high cost of living should come a high cost of parking. DOTS actually gives our student body a perfectly reasonable annual rate — not just based on where we’re located, but also based on what our peers are charging.

Transportation policy is no fun anywhere, but ours could stand to be a lot more expensive.