Free parking on or near Stanford campus?

February 18, 2013 2:14 PM

I will need to park a car on or near Stanford campus this week this evening through Friday evening. I would prefer to park the car as close to Campus & Bowdoin as possible, preferably within a mile. Worst comes to worst I can use visitor parking ($12 a day), but I would prefer something cheaper or ideally free. Are there are any streets in Palo Alto without parking restrictions near the eastern side of campus, for example?
posted by dd42 to Travel & Transportation around Stanford, CA (6 answers total)

Does the car need to be parked all day? Parking is free most places on campus between 4pm and 6am. So, you can have the car parked there in the evening as long as you're around to move it elsewhere in the morning.
posted by shesbookish at 2:25 PM on February 18, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks shesbookish but yes the car must be parked all day. Ideally I would simply leave it somewhere for those 4 days, without moving it or changing stickers, etc.
posted by dd42 at 2:41 PM on February 18, 2013

I used to live at Ramona and Hawthorne, which is about a ten minute walk from campus. You could definitely park for free for four days on Ramona or one of the nearby streets. Just be careful to check signs about street cleaning.
posted by ewiar at 2:55 PM on February 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I used to live in College Terrace, and although almost the entire neighborhood requires a parking permit during business hours, there are a couple of streets that have opted out of the program and have no restrictions. There is a .pdf map here of those streets. My boyfriend used to park his car with expired, out of state plates on Williams for a week at a time while we were traveling. We moved in December, though, so I am not certain if anything has changed in the past two months (my instinct is that it has not - it is a very quiet neighborhood).
posted by puellaeterna at 8:12 PM on February 18, 2013

As a last resort, would leaving it in the parking lots at either town and country (el camino and and Embarcadero) or the Stanford shopping center and then taking the free shuttle to campus work?
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 7:34 AM on February 19, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks all! The map puellaeterna provided is exactly what I was looking for.
posted by dd42 at 10:47 AM on February 19, 2013