Navigating parking near the University of Florida can be very stressful, and the constant construction around campus can make it even more difficult to figure out.
While there may seem to be lots of parking options, including city parking and university parking, most parking options are only available with parking decals, which are only available to certain people.
At Sweetwater, we have helped hundreds of students learn about their parking options around Gainesville, and we recognize the importance of knowing all of your options so you can plan where you’ll park your car.
Many student housing apartments offer some sort of parking option, including a parking garage or access to city parking.
In this article, we will give you information about your on-campus and off-campus parking options, as well as pricing, including:
Parking near UF
Parking Options: On-Campus
If you’re living on-campus or plan on being on-campus often, you may be interested in on-campus parking options at UF. We will go over all of the parking garages and street parking options on-campus, including pricing for each option.
To fully understand where each on-campus parking lot and garage is located, please view this color-coded UF parking map.
Street Parking
Street parking in Gainesville has explanatory signs on every street. Photo courtesy of WCJB.
- Street parking on campus is highly limited, and it’s mostly only available for professors and other university faculty members.
However, most restrictions on on-campus parking spots are lifted between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m., so you can temporarily park in most spots during this time. Students typically use this as a short-term solution, using street parking to pick up or drop someone off or to attend a quick event like an hour-long on-campus club meeting.
Each parking spot will have a university parking sign that lists when the spot is restricted, so make sure to check these signs before you park so you don’t get a ticket.
Garage Parking
Most student housing apartments in Gainesville have parking garages available for students. Photo courtesy of The Standard.
- There are a few parking garages on campus, and each garage requires a different decal. Decals are available for purchase based on your status at UF. As a student, you can get a parking decal based on where you live and how many credits you’ve taken.
If you’re living on-campus in a dorm, you can get a red decal. Red decal parking is scattered around campus, but options are somewhat limited, so it might take a few laps around a parking garage to find an open spot.
Undergraduate students who do not live on campus are only eligible for parking in the Park & Ride parking spots. Park & Ride parking lots are located around the edges of campus, and most students who park here tend to live further from campus, and drive to these lots and then take the bus to the specific section of campus that they’re trying to go to.
The University of Florida Welcome Center has a parking garage that is only used for short-term parking.
Pricing
On-campus parking is only available through the purchase of a decal or daily parking fee. To determine which decal you are eligible for, visit the UF Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) website. After you figure out which decal you are eligible for, you can purchase it through the same website.
Here is the price breakdown for on-campus parking decals for students:
- Annual: $160.00
- Semester: $80.00
- Monthly: $35.00
- Weekly: $15.00
Parking at the Welcome Center is available through the purchase of a temporary parking pass. These can be purchased in the parking garage at pay stations located in various spots in the garage and staircases.
Here is the price breakdown for parking passes at the Welcome Center:
- Daily parking: $8.00
- 2-hour parking: $5.00
- 45-minute parking: $2.00
Parking Options: Off-Campus
Off-campus parking near UF is hard to find, but it definitely exists.
Most student housing apartments located near campus have parking garages that are available for residents who purchase a parking pass. Each apartment prices their parking passes at a slightly different rate, but most apartment parking passes for student housing apartments near campus range from $100-$300 per month.
Gainesville offers city parking available for anyone living in each of the 12 zones that the city has outlined on its website. Most student housing apartments located near campus are also located in a zone that enables students to buy a city parking decal and park in the surrounding neighborhood.
Pricing
Gainesville city parking permits can be purchased through the City of Gainesville website. Gainesville city parking permits in all zones cost $226.75 for the year, and the year begins on August 1.
Student housing apartments each price their garage parking passes at different rates, so here is a table of the cost of parking at popular student housing apartments near campus:
| Apartment | Cost of Parking (Per Month) |
| The Standard | $150 |
| Hub University | $300 |
| Hub 3rd Ave. | $300 |
| Lark | $130 |
| Liv+ | $75 |
| Social 28 | $200 |
As you can see, the cost of parking can vary greatly based on which apartment you choose to live in, but it’s also important to factor the cost of parking into your monthly budget.
Many areas around campus have started to implement the Passport parking system, which is an app that enables you to use meter parking without the need for coins. The Passport app is free to download and is very easy to use.
To use the Passport app, you upload your credit card information and input the numbered zone that you’ve parked in to pay for temporary parking. These zones are numbered differently than the City of Gainesville numbered zones, so make sure to check the signs near your parking spot to make sure you input the correct zone number.
Passport parking spots can only be parked in for up to two hours at a time but only cost about $1.00 an hour.
Scooter Parking Near UF
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Students use scooters to get around in Gainesville.
If you don’t have a car, you can still get around.
Many students who do not have a car have a scooter. Scooter parking is relatively easy to navigate as there is much more scooter parking than car parking.
All scooter drivers are eligible for the same scooter parking decal, regardless of where you live or how many credits you’ve taken. Scooter parking is scattered all around campus, but the most popular on-campus scooter parking is located on Inner Road by Broward Hall.
Other Transportation Options
If you don’t have a car nor scooter, many students have started to use stand up scooters that can be rented through the scooters themselves and the apps that accompany them. The most common scooters at UF are Bird, Veo and Spin. These scooters make it much easier to travel around the areas surrounding campus, especially when it’s too hot to walk.
Additionally, if you don’t have a car, many students use Lyft or Uber to travel places at night. Lyft offers a discount for all UF students, so Wednesday through Sunday from 9pm to 3am, you can get a 50% discount on all Lyft rides.
For more information about the Lyft discounts, visit the UF Safe Rides program page on the UF TAPS website.
We hope this article helped you better understand your parking options on- and off-campus. If you have any questions about parking at UF or parking offered at Sweetwater, please contact our leasing staff who would be happy to answer any questions that you have.
