College Park One of the Worst College Towns in the USA to Have a Car: Study

COLLEGE PARK, MD — A new study claims that College Park, the home to the University of Maryland, is one of the worst college towns in the entire country to own your own car.

ValuePenguin, a consumer data and industry trends analysis company, ranked all college towns in the U.S. based on 14 factors that "were most closely related to students' consideration of driving at school." Those factors were divided into three main categories: affordability, which includes gas prices and parking costs; safety, which includes number of driving deaths and rate of car thefts; and convenience, which includes ease of parking and the average commute time.

College Park wasn't last -- that honor goes to Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan -- but it was pretty close to the bottom.

Its worst score was in affordability, where it was 93rd out of 105 college towns. It didn't fare much better in the convenience category, coming in 86th place -- not a surprise considering how difficult it is to find parking in this city and the brutal commutes most people have to face.

It scored reasonably well in terms of safety, coming in 34th, but that score wasn't good enough to keep it from being ranked 91st out of 105 schools overall.

College Park is just a couple hours away from the No. 1 town on the list: Harrisburg, Va., which is home to James Madison University.

Image via Wikimedia user Axamir