It seems Madison, WI came up with a plan earlier this year to make more money for the city by changing the ticketing and metering rules for downtown:

street meter enforcement will be implemented from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., starting an hour earlier and ending an hour later than before

Simple enough. Many big universities and their local towns consider parking structures to be a major revenue opportunity. I could not help but notice Madison was so sure of the positive financial results of their plan that they were debating in advance how to spend the windfall:

According to Madison Parking Operations Manager Bill Knobeloch, a portion of the projected revenue will go toward a new city-assessed fee for 10 percent of the on-street gross parking revenue.

Knobeloch said that revenue will finance reconstruction of the Government East parking structure, the city’s oldest ramp, and possibly the construction of a new parking lot in the middle State Street region, by the current Buckeye Lot.

Sounds like a lot of money. Unfortunately, it turns out that people have become far more savvy about their parking and instead of just spending more money, drivers have adjusted their parking and driving habits. This means the city has been denied their bump in revenues. In fact, some are starting to suggest that parking revenues will actually be down this year. The question now remains whether downtown business has taken a hit from the parking rule changes, or if business is up in spite of the new flow.