Wondering why parking costs what it does? Curious as to where UW Transportation Services invests the money it takes in? Here is a snapshot of the programs and campus improvements that Transportation Services funds. For more information, contact us via the feedback page.

One of the highlighted goals of the Campus Master Plan is to create more ramp parking in order to free up land for future development. While spatially efficient, these ramps are expensive to construct--a single stall can easily cost $55,000! Due to financial and spatial limitations, the University has capped the number of stalls on campus at about 13,000. With 60,000 people at UW-Madison clearly not everyone can drive alone. This brings us to a second expense, UW Commuter Solutions.

At Transportation Services, we truly value all employees and students who choose not to drive alone to work, including people who vanpool, carpool, bus, bike, walk and/or use a Park and Ride. By reducing the overall demand for parking, they enable us to meet our charge to cap parking.

In order to encourage folks to use alternative transportation, we offer many commuter solutions to faculty, staff and students.  These solutions include the campus bus and complimentary employee bus passes, cost sharing through carpool and vanpool parking, comprehensive assistance and route planning for any mode(s) of alternative transportation, and more.  For complete information, please see our UW Commuter Solutions page. While these programs do not generate revenue, they enable us to avoid costs by reducing the demand for parking.

As an auxiliary enterprise, UW Transportation Services does not receive any state funding. We must charge users in order to pay for parking garages and lots, bus service and Federal and State mandated alternative transportation activities. It currently costs $17.2 million to provide these services and programs to the campus community. We set our rates in compliance with University policy to cover only the cost of operating the department, including infrastructure improvements such as new lots and garages.

The majority of the funding (approximately 48%) is generated from permit revenue in parking garages and lots. Special event and visitor parking activities contribute 36% and less than 5% of our funding comes from parking citations.

The on-campus Metro bus service (Routes 80, 81, 84 & 85) is provided at no charge to the users. The costs for this service is shared between Transportation Services, ASM and Housing. The total cost of the bus service is $1.5 million annually. Approximately 2.6 million rides were provided last year.

UW Transportation Services provides faculty and staff with a complimentary Madison Metro bus pass as an incentive to not drive their vehicle to campus as well as a low cost alternative to on-campus parking, Transportation Services is billed per ride; which in 2008-2009 amounted to $1.3 million. There are over 14,000 employees who participate in this program.

Transportation Services funds their portion of these services through parking permit and visitor parking fees.