Just in time for the warning bell, junior Adele Betik circles the neighborhood near Goose Hollow in a daily search for an elusive free parking spot. Betik travels to Lincoln from her home on the east side.
“I have a bus [I could take], but it tends to take about 45 minutes from my house. In the mornings it’s so hectic, and I don’t have time to wake up at 6 am, and hop on a bus at 7:30 for an hour,” says Betik.
Many Lincoln students choose to drive to school. However, this is challenging since the school is located downtown and many feel that parking is hard to come by.
The lack of accessible parking is a concern among many students who drive to school. Senior Magana Bancud says the lack of parking can make it hard for students to be on time.
“I think that [being late] happens to every single student who drives to school. There will always be several days where they get to school on time, but have to spend 10-20 minutes circling the building finding parking,” said Bancud.
Furthermore, paying for street parking is not economically feasible for many high school students. Senior Lydia Levy feels that even students who have a job are unable to pay for daily parking, which ranges from $4.00 to $4.50 per hour, according to Portland.gov. This means that for the 7 hours students spend in school each a day they are paying between $28 and $31.5.
“Many of us can’t pay for parking and many of us don’t want to pay, Levy said. “It’s half an hour’s worth of pay, which is too much for a regular basis.”
Lincoln has addressed the lack of parking by providing a lottery for semester-long parking passes for seniors.
“You have to apply and they give priority for people who are in sports because of all [the] equipment. The rest of [the passes go in a lottery],” said Levy. “You can get a Zone A parking pass for a semester and the application is $5.”
While this does propose a solution for some students, others like Levy, feel as though the system could be improved.
“I know people who don’t even drive to school that got a pass,” said Levy. “I think they should be able to say ‘I don’t drive to school,’ reject it so someone else can get it.”
Betik also agrees that the pass system has potential but there are not enough passes being created.
“There’s a lot of close industrial areas near here, so they can make another parking lot and have a pass system for that because the parking pass system that they have right now is helpful,” said Betik. “Right now it’s hard to just get a parking spot in general and it’s pretty frustrating.”
