Ever feel like finding a parking space on campus is increasingly difficult? You’re not alone. The Daily decided to find some answers to the source of frustration for many students.

“We have approximately 21,000 parking spaces,” said Brodie Hamilton, director of Parking and Transportation Services (P&TS). “Out of those 21,000 parking spaces, we are at approximately 80 percent utilization rate, so we never max out.”

Hamilton’s comments prompted further questions: Just how many cars does this campus deal with on a daily basis? Are those parking spaces really sufficient? Detailed statistics on the number of cars on campus were not readily available from P&TS, so The Daily used the latest Stanford University Traffic Monitoring Report, from November 2006, to calculate the figures.

The report gave data from a cordon count that tallied the number of vehicles entering and exiting the campus. Counts were set up at 16 entry and exit points, forming a cordon around the campus.

The calculations yielded some interesting results. On a randomly chosen day (Monday, Apr. 17, 2006) the total number of cars entering campus was an astounding 36,575 and the total number leaving was 36,229 over the course of 24 hours.

In light of these statistics, one must wonder whether the 21,000 parking spaces on campus is adequate. If all 36,000 were to be on campus at the same time, approximately 15,000 cars would be without a parking space.

Interestingly, the 36,000 figure also excludes what is referred to as “cut-through” traffic.

According to the report, “License plate numbers are recorded for each entering and exiting vehicle to determine the amount of non-campus traffic.”

Thus, it can be assumed that all the traffic statistics recorded in the report are directly involved with campus. For the spring counts, the average a.m. and p.m. cut through rates were 13.94 percent and 15.72 percent, respectively. If we were to include these figures, the amount of traffic on campus would be even higher.

However, Hamilton said that the number of parking spaces available is sufficient to deal with the demand.

“If we say there are approximately 21,000 spaces at 80 percent capacity, then roughly at any particular time, assuming that there are no major events going on, there will be about 1,000 free parking spaces available,” he explained.

The report also revealed that on average for 2006, during the a.m. peak hour, 3,048 cars entered campus, and during the p.m. peak hour, 3,427 cars exited the campus. Peak hours varied depending on the road in question, but were generally between 7:45 and 8:45 a.m. and 4:45 and 5:45 p.m.

Palm Drive alone had 5,476 cars entering campus on Apr. 17, 2006. Of these, 527 were during the morning rush hour.

Hamilton also provided statistics detailing changes in the number of parking spaces over the last 10 years. The data shows that despite a slight decrease in the last few years, the number of parking spaces has slowly increased over the past decade.

In 1997, there were 18,310 parking spaces; in 2002 there were 20,107; and as of Nov. 7, there were 21,378 parking spaces on campus.

However, Hamilton acknowledged that the number of parking spaces varies regularly for a variety of different reasons.

“The University is in a constant state of flux, especially with all the construction going on,” he said. “This really affects the number of parking spaces we have.”

There appears to be a slight trend over the last 10 years to increase the number of parking spaces on campus, and with the four-level Wilbur Field underground parking structure expected to be completed later this academic year, another 1,187 parking stalls will become available.

One can only wonder what this means for the future. Some days it feels as though there are almost too many bikes and cars on campus — if there were more parking spaces made available, might that encourage more students to have cars, thus exacerbating the situation? More vehicular traffic would likely lead to more biking accidents, a phenomenon that has almost become a rite of passage for freshmen new to the Farm.