Parking around campus is not cheap. Unless you have a friend living in an apartment who will allow you to park in one of their spots, you will probably end up paying quite a bit of money for a permit to park in one of the university lots. Parking outside of academic buildings is also either by permit or meter. Unless you are going to be driving up to Chicago every weekend (or something similar), I would probably recommend leaving the car at home.

Busses

Illinois has a great bus system that is free for students. The 22 Illini bus goes all over campus and runs every 10 minutes. There are also buses that go to downtown Champaign, downtown Urbana, and the mall and airport. If you end up living in PAR or FAR, your primary busses will be the 12, 13, 21, and 22. If you live in ISR or Busey, your primary busses will be the 10, 12, and 22. If you live in Ikenberry, your primary busses will be the 1, 10, and 22. Feel free to look up their routes at https://www.cumtd.com/. I would also highly recommend downloading one of the numerous CUMTD bus apps before coming to campus to use (I use the iOS app called “CU Transit”).

Get A Bike

If you want an even faster way to get around campus, I would suggest looking into a bicycle; Champaign-Urbana is very bike friendly.

Getting To and From Campus

Finally, for getting to/from campus, there are several bus companies, primarily Peoria Charter and Suburban Express (don’t take Suburban Express if you can avoid it) that offer fairly reasonable prices to/from the Chicagoland area. There is also the Amtrak and Willard Airport.