Priced out of parking: The struggle of Glasgow’s student drivers

These days, it seems like students are priced out of everything. You want a house? Forget it. Do you need to get the train? £30 for a weekly ticket please. So, when it comes to parking your banged-up student car, you’d think there would be some consideration. However, this is not the case and for many students in Glasgow, they, along with everything else, are being priced out of parking.  

Parking in the city centre can cost up to £32 per day in some multi-storey lots and students can expect to shell out up to £6 a day for a student parking permit at certain universities. No campus in Glasgow has extensive parking for students, and the historical and urban nature of the landscape surrounding them prohibits significant parking expansion.  

Glasgow City Council has faced backlash in the press over proposals to extend charging hours and there are no plans to increase the number of parking spaces within the city. 

via Pexels

UCAS data from a 2025 study found that 46 per cent of Scottish 18-year-old students are living at home with their parents or guardians compared to 22 per cent a decade ago. This may be because of the extortionate rents in both the private and student sectors, keeping them at home, while student loans have begun to continually lag behind the rising costs of local accommodation. 

For many of these students, having a car has become a lifeline.   

Of the 21 per cent of students who use a private car to get to school in Scotland, most of them are from rural areas, places where reliable public transport has become nothing more than a distant memory. Public transport in the city itself is hardly doing any better. Glasgow has some of the highest bus prices in the UK and there are no signs of them coming down anytime soon.  

Bus services throughout the country are struggling to stay afloat amid rising fuel prices, and there has been a scandalous 15 per cent decrease in the number of bus operators since 2017-18.   

Speaking to a 22-year-old student at City of Glasgow College, she shared that she drives the 40-minute route from Falkirk into the city centre most days during the week.   

For her, it can get “super busy and expensive,” and the morning rush hour makes it “hard to find parking nearby.”  

She says: “I try to avoid it, looking for free parking places anywhere I can find them.”   

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Free parking can only be found farther from the city centre, mostly on random streets and avenues, which itself has raised concerns surrounding the safety of female students walking back to their cars.

via Pexels

Speaking to another Glasgow City College student we were told that as an 18-year-old new driver, she is now driving from Ayrshire into the city to avoid the irregular buses.   

She said: “I sometimes park in the city centre, but I try to avoid it if I can.   

“They are usually quite full during the week. I know quite a lot of people who drive to college or university, and that does make it quite hard to get a space.”  

When asked about the price of parking, she said: “You have to pay a lot, on a good day it’s £6 for the day parking, but other than that it adds up, it is quite expensive.”  

She also says that she “won’t usually park in the city centre, I prefer getting transport links from further away, but I know quite a few people who do park.”   

With the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow this year, and major modernisation work continuing throughout the city, the Council is unlikely to pay much attention to the plight of student drivers and with the universities running a strict programme of permits, they are unlikely to have much sympathy either.  

As a student, you can get yourself discounts on all sorts of things, and saving a few quid on a Burger King can certainly put a smile on your face. But there is no discount for the expensive daily obstacles we all face. Whether it is right or wrong, it seems unlikely that there will be any sort of reduction in parking prices for anybody in Glasgow anytime soon, especially for students.   

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Featured image via Unsplash