Students at the University of Kentucky are finding parking challenging as the 2024-25 academic year brought a record-breaking freshmen class, with no significant additions to parking facilities. 

Recent construction all over campus has depleted parking allotted to students and staff making it harder for people to find a spot on campus. 

The construction of new buildings has temporarily reduced parking availability including the loss of Orange Lot due to construction of a new building for the United States Department of Agriculture making employees and some professional graduate students park at South Red Lot. 

“I always say that my goal is to make sure things don’t get worse on campus. They may not always get better, but we want to make sure that they don’t get worse. Most of the time, that’s possible,” UK Director of Transportation Services Lance Broeking said. 

As new housing construction is underway near South Lawn, additional parking will be added. 

“There’s a lot going on with construction and potential of moving people around to try to get them closer to where they want to be,” UK Transportation Services Communication Officer Lisa Cleveland said.

The Board of Trustees approved a new south campus parking structure in June 2024 to expand parking by about 500 new spots.

“We’re always trying to manage the allocation to make sure that there’s enough for the students and enough spaces for the employees,” Broeking said.

As a commuter student, social work senior Selenna Neris said the limited amount of available spots makes it difficult for her when parking at Cornerstone Garage.

“Especially if I have a class later in the day, like at noon, it’s even worse trying to find a parking spot because there’s almost none,” Neris said. 

Some students feel as if there is an issue with not only north campus parking, but similar struggles occur at Kroger Field, according to sophomore public health major Chase Patterson.

“K-Lot is difficult depending on the time. Like today, I spent 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot,” Patterson said.

As of Jan. 21, there are 9,285 commuter and residential type permits active, according to Jennifer Johnson, manger of the permitting department of UK Transportation Services.

According to Broeking, UK Transportation Services looks at the increase of upcoming students with the limited amount of parking spaces available to students to see how many permits they can allocate. 

“So each year, what we do is we kind of do an incremental look at where we were last year, what we expect to change between last year and this year, and then what we’re expecting to happen this year,” Broeking said. “So there’s all sorts of different components that go into the calculus of that.”

Cleveland said even though parking may not be growing for students and employees right away, there are many different ways that students and staff can educate themselves on UK parking.

“It’s a continual learning experience to get people to understand that there are other lots out there, College Way, East and West, one of which was expanded this year, and then Commonwealth Drive,” Cleveland said.