Questions about the Madison Parks Paid Parking Pilot Program Proposal

You may have recently seen or read about the idea of charging folks to park a vehicle in a City of Madison park. Before we dive into this concept, let us start at the beginning. In the summer of 2024, as part of a comprehensive response in preparing for a 5% tax levy reduction plan, a cost-recovery model was proposed that offered a way to absorb programming costs across the Division, without spending taxes. The proposed model, however, which included a paid parking pilot among other potential user-fees, was not included in the Mayor's 2025 Executive Operating Budget.

Since then, an amendment at the City's Finance Committee unanimously approved the paid parking pilot as a part of the 2025 Operating Budget. From there, the pilot program concept moved forward to be included in the proposed 2025 operating budget, which was Adopted by Madison Common Council on November 12, 2024.

As defined, a pilot program is a short-term, small-scale experiment. Similar to the Dogs in Parks Pilot Program developed in 2015, the initial Pay-to-Park in Parks pilot program would go before the Board of Park Commissioners in early 2025 and seek their guidance for a more specific plan. From there, as the plan continues to develop, potential stakeholders will be consulted to provide feedback and followed by community members invited to share ideas, suggestions and feedback through various channels likely to include a public meeting and an online survey in the spring of 2025.

Initial ideas for the pilot program suggest charging to park a vehicle during home Badger football games, in the north lot of Vilas Park, while continuing to provide the south lot as free three-hour parking.  Other concepts include fee-based parking for a limited number of reserved commuter parking stalls during peak hours in popular lots such as Garner, Olin or Burr Jones. This concept allows park visitors plenty of free parking to visit a park throughout the day. It is unlikely that all of these concepts will be a part of the experiment in 2025, but these and other ideas will be considered by the Board of Park Commissioners.  As the pilot program takes shape, we welcome and encourage community feedback.

A key takeaway is that this is a concept only. As the pilot fee-to-park program is implemented, Parks staff will collect information about its impacts – both positive and negative - and will report back to the Board of Park Commissioners in early 2026. This blog post will be updated as more information becomes available.