Fresno State is moving on from physical parking passes and opting for a digital version.
Starting in Spring 2025, students will need to purchase a digital pass for a semester or year-long pass. The price will remain the same: $93 for a semester and $186 for the year. According to Derek Brantley, the parking and transportation manager with the Fresno State Police Department, the pass will be tied to a vehicle’s license plate.
Any car with a valid license plate will be eligible for the permit since it does not involve a car’s insurance, registration or other information.
Students and staff will only be allowed to have one vehicle tied to a permit, but people will be able to transfer their permits to other cars in case of changes in transportation or emergencies. The school will release more details on this later this semester. 
While that information hasn’t been released, California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) has a similar system and has its guidelines set for swapping vehicles.
CSUSB implemented its new digital pass this semester. Their website says that students with multiple cars or a loaner car will have to submit a license plate update/change request. This process can take up to four hours and needs to be done before 2 p.m. to process on the same day.
As for enforcing these permits, campus Traffic Operations have a more modern system.
“Traffic Operations staff will patrol the campus and collect license plate information,” said Brantley. “This data is then sent to the parking portal to verify whether there is a valid virtual permit associated with that plate.”
This system is similar to what the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has.
Sophia Sandoval, a student worker for the UCSD Transportation Services, said that the amount of citations given has stayed roughly the same despite the change.
UCSD switched to a digital parking pass in 2021 and had its fair share of issues.
“Our customers either printed their receipt and would put it on their dash or not come to campus because they would think they needed a physical permit,” Sandoval said. “After a while the adjustment to virtual permits settled in with our students and staff, creating more accessibility and convenience to our customers purchasing parking permits online.”
She also added that the school often sends out surveys and tries to connect with the students and staff to try and make their system as easy and eco-friendly as possible.
Becoming a more environmentally friendly school is one of the main reasons Fresno State is making this change.
“Moreover, by reducing reliance on printed materials and streamlining operations, the License Plate Recognition (LPR) system supports our sustainability initiatives, making our parking solution more environmentally friendly,” Brantley said.
This striving for sustainability has been a goal for Fresno State, especially since the CUPR construction project which saw the improvement of the school’s heating and cooling systems.
An additional benefit of the new LPR system is the added security it will bring to students. It will be more difficult to steal permits since they are tied to license plate numbers. This also removes the risk of losing a permit when being delivered through the mail.
Overall the digital parking passes will aim to bring convenience, sustainability and efficiency to students and staff next semester and onward.
