St. Olaf College is in the process of implementing several expansions to parking in response to a surge in demand for student parking passes. The college has also considered new transportation options to make student life without a car more feasible.
Northfield City Council recently approved the construction of 26 new parking spaces in the Lincoln Street parking lot, and the College will be adding 93 new spaces near Skoglund as well. With a waitlist of over 300 students requesting parking passes for the 2025-26 academic year, these changes are expected to ease the demand for parking.
“Once that lot in Skoglund, especially, is opened, the vast majority of people on the waiting list will have access to spots, so that will be exciting when it happens,” said Director of Public Safety Jeffrey Favreau in an interview with The Olaf Messenger.
Currently, St. Olaf’s student body is over 3,000, and as of now, there are only about 800 general student parking passes available on campus. Therefore, the College is working towards expanded transportation options that will support students who do not have personal vehicles. In the meantime, both the Northfield Lines Metro Express Bus and Campus-Go shuttle vans have expanded their services and the College has worked to keep the price point for all alternate transportation options accessible.
However, for students with disabilities, cars can be a necessity. As such, there are multiple different parking accommodations made by the Disability and Access (DAC) office. These include blue permits which allow students with general parking passes to park in designated spaces closer to certain dorms and buildings, accommodations for students without parking passes who have regular medical appointments outside of Northfield, and handicap spaces, which have also undergone a change this year. In the past, there were handicap hang-tags distributed by DAC that allowed students to park at any building on campus; however, due to logistical issues, this year, those passes will need to be obtained through the State.
In an interview with The Olaf Messenger, Director of Disability, Access, and Technology Support Laura Knobel-Piehl recommended that students looking for parking accommodations start by speaking to their doctor to make the process more efficient. Accessibility needs often change throughout the academic year, however there are currently enough spaces to meet the demand for disability parking and therefore no plans to include it in the parking expansions this year.
As St. Olaf’s community continues to grow, new ideas are always being considered to maintain the practicality of a residential campus.
“I would love there to be a focus on having a campus shuttle that just circumnavigates campus,” Knobel-Piehl said. “I really, firmly believe that there would be fewer disability requests if there was a way to navigate campus without needing to rely on legs and cardiovascular systems, and that goes for faculty and staff too.”
The process itself for obtaining parking permits may be re-evaluated in the future.
“We currently have a system where it’s basically first come, first serve,” Favreau said. “I want to take a look at that, and we can evaluate if that’s the best system. Does that serve our community the best? Are there ways that we can tweak that?”