Ku
Parking

As a University of Kansas student, I struggle with parking on campus. As this is a common problem with KU students, I and a team of classmates recorded the habits of KU parking lots during school hours in a dataset on Microsoft Excel. Creating visualizations from this dataset, we formed an article about the activity of KU parking lots based on different factors like time of day and weather.

Hours of the Day
7 a.m.
8 a.m..
9 a.m.
10 a.m.
11 a.m.
12 a.m.
1 p.m.
2 p.m.
3 p.m.
4 p.m.
5 p.m.

Average of Lot Capacity (%)
17.23
20.32
44.91
70.86
86.07
113.47
64.31
66.20
68.31
49.45
5.04

Rollercoaster Capacities: How University of Kansas Parking Lots Change with the Weather and Time of Day

Parking at the University of Kansas is often a struggle for students. Parking capacity seems to constantly be at a high, especially during class hours.

We interviewed a student who parked at KU and gathered their opinion on parking on campus. We did this to gather data from the people who park on an everyday basis to back up our research. When asked about student parking, our participant stated “It is okay but it could be better,” and “It makes a difference what time of day because when I come at 9 am there are places for me to park, but when I come for my 2 pm class all lots are full and I have to find street parking which is not ideal because I paid for a pass and have to set aside more time to find another spot, most of the time further than the lot itself.”

Time of Day as an Effect

University of Kansas parking lots tend to vary in capacity based on multiple different factors. One of these factors is the time of day. For example, the average Yellow Lot capacity peaks around lunchtime each day, with the lowest capacities being early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

So what is the best time of day to park? Data shows that people looking for parking for evening classes are going to have the easiest time finding spots. Only 5% of spots are filled after 5 p.m.

In the middle of the day, lot capacity is not subjected to change drastically. From about 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the lot capacity stays relatively the same, where two out of every three spots are filled. So for students who have long days on campus, the best time to park would be in the morning before 10, where there is around a 25% increase in lot capacity between the hours of 9 and 10 in the morning.

Another factor that seems to affect lot capacity is weather. This includes temperature and precipitation levels. Students seem to drive to campus more when the weather is moderate.

Lot capacity is highest when the feel-like temperature is in the 70s, peaking at 7 out of every 10 spots filled. This only drops slightly when the feel-like temperature is in the 90s.

In contrast to the effects of warm weather, cold weather makes drastic changes to the lot capacity. In the three times we observed parking lots when the feel-like temperature was below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the lots were all less than 14% filled.

Created by Hailey Krumm using Flourish

As the day goes on, the temperature starts to increase. When comparing temperature and time of day, the lots are most full between 10 a.m. and about 2 p.m. when the feel-like temperature rises above 70 degrees.

In addition to time of day and temperature, precipitation can greatly affect how full a lot may be. As a general trend, as rain increases, parking lot fullness drops dramatically. Once precipitation level hits 0.02 inches, lot capacity starts to drop. By the time that precipitation levels hit 0.04 inches, the lot capacity has dropped by almost 20%.

Learn more about the data used in this article.

Precipitatiom

Weather as an Effect

Temperature