Stanford plans new bus parking site for Lasuen Street at Campus Drive
Tourist buses, which have been accommodated on Roth Way since 2011, will be moved farther away from the Oval and Main Quad to a new area on Lasuen Street at Campus Drive. Parking & Transportation Services welcomes suggestions about managing buses and tourists.
Tour buses will park farther away from the Main Quad under new rules being drawn up by Parking & Transportation Services.
When he designed the Stanford campus in the late 1880s, famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted clearly never imagined a future in which two dozen buses bearing eager tourists might stream down Palm Drive on a daily basis.
But that has become reality as the university's status as a popular Bay Area tourist attraction has grown over the past decade. Each day from dawn to dusk, busloads of tourists visit campus, seeking a peek inside Memorial Church or posing for the perfect photograph with Hoover Tower in the background.
The challenge, however, is that Olmsted designed the Stanford campus with teaching and learning – not tourism – in mind. The overwhelming numbers of sightseeing visits are increasingly impeding the university's academic and business operations, especially in the Main Quad.
New location
This August, the university will institute its third tour-bus change in less than five years. Tourist buses, which have been parked on Roth Way between Palm and Lomita drives since 2011, will be moved to Lasuen Street at Campus Drive, where they will be farther removed from the Oval and Main Quad. Space will be provided for three buses, each paying $200 per hour, and two vans, each paying $100 per hour. Also available will be new restrooms and a waiting area with tables, all currently under construction.
Before 2011, an average of 26 tour buses would drop off visitors at the top of the Oval daily. Many buses would idle there as passengers toured campus. The buses impeded deliveries at the top of the Oval and imperiled security by blocking fire lanes, leading to the construction of bus parking on Roth Way.
A survey conducted in 2013 showed that, despite the new policies, the number of buses had doubled in 18 months to about 50 per day. So, in 2014, the protocol was updated and the university began requiring all commercial tour groups and tour bus operators to register with the university, pay for parking and observe rules for large groups visiting campus. Those rules include prohibitions on entering campus buildings, peering through windows, talking loudly or smoking near buildings and wandering the campus unaccompanied by an English-speaking tour guide.
Seeking solutions
Parking & Transportation Services (P&TS) staff members say the latest location change should lead to better bus control, but it remains to be seen whether it will stem the number of tourists visiting campus. In May, for instance, bus reservations were up 7 percent over the previous year. Bus reservations, limited to three per hour, are expected to be filled through the end of July.
As the university has sought control over bus visits, tour companies have sought to evade the fees, according to Brian Shaw, director of Parking & Transportation Services. Some, for instance, have abandoned use of buses holding 40 to 57 passengers in favor of multiple vans – or they discharge passengers at other locations to avoid the cost of parking on campus.
Others delay their arrival into the evening, which has prompted Public Safety to add officers to patrol the Main Quad until 10 p.m. Officers issue citations to buses arriving after 6 p.m.
"We're adapting and deploying additional resources to manage the influx of buses and vans coming to campus," said Ward Thomas, who manages parking and transportation operations.
Shaw, who has worked in transportation services at Emory, Chicago and Penn, said the university's real challenge likely isn't the buses, but how to accommodate the tourists themselves. He said he believes other California colleges that are also experiencing increased tourism may have campus designs that better handle large tour groups. He cited UCLA, where the design of the campus discourages tourists from visiting academic buildings because they are distant and uphill.
"Memorial Church is the objective of tourists," Shaw said. "But the Main Quad is designed for teaching, not tour groups. White Plaza has room for more people, and it's nearer the bookstore, Tresidder and Old Union. But there isn't space for buses in the Tresidder lot. The answer might be in finding ways to engage and captivate tourists closer to where buses will be parking and away from the Main Quad."
In fact, some Bay Area attractions have signs designed to satisfy tourists' need for photographs, including Facebook, whose large thumb's up illustration at the entrance to its campus is a popular spot.
Shaw and Thomas said they are open to suggestions about how the university can better control the vexing flow of buses and tourists on campus.
"We want to protect the academic mission of the university, while remaining an open and accessible campus," Shaw said. "If people have ideas on how to achieve this, please let us know through a comment form we set up for tour bus suggestions."
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