Alternate-side parking tickets drop 94% in a decade in Madison, data shows

The combined number of tickets issued for both violations, which cost $20 and $60, respectively, hit a high during the past 11 years in the winter of 2014-15 with 27,120. Since then, the number issued — and the revenue they’ve generated for a city that routinely complains of tight budgets — has fallen precipitously, according to city data.

The winter of 2012-13 saw 26,784 tickets and $731,480 in fines issued, although the total collected is different because not everybody pays their tickets on time or at all. This past winter, the city issued only 1,596 tickets, representing $86,720 in fines.

Madison’s alternate-side and snow emergency parking rules are in effect Nov. 15 through March 15 and are aimed at making sure city crews are able to keep streets clear of snow in a part of the country that typically gets about 50 inches of snow per winter.

The alternate-side rule requires people who park on the street outside of the central city to make sure their vehicles are parked on the odd-numbered side of the street from 1 to 7 a.m. on odd-numbered days and the even-numbered side of the street from 1 to 7 a.m. on even-numbered days.

The snow-emergency rule is the same as the alternate-side rule but only applies to those parking overnight in the denser, central part of the city designated the Snow Emergency Zone, and only when enough snow has fallen or is expected to fall to spur the city to declare a snow emergency.

Ald. Mike Verveer, whose Downtown-area 4th District in entirely within the Snow Emergency Zone, said there’s been “very poor compliance” with the snow emergency rules in his district in recent years, and that has left his constituents complaining about winter streets choked with ice ruts and snow.

City Parking Division Manager Stefanie Cox said the city largely suspended enforcement of the alternate-side and snow emergency rules in the first winter of the pandemic, 2020-21, as one of many efforts governments at all levels made to ease the burden on residents hit by widespread job losses and other economic stressors that came with lockdowns and other pandemic disruptions.

But the pandemic also “allowed us the opportunity to review our winter enforcement operations and staffing model,” she said.

Cox said it had become difficult to find part-time parking-enforcement officers willing to work those overnight winter shifts. It made more sense to concentrate the city’s enforcement efforts on the times when there’s snow coming or already on the ground, she said, and to hire full-time staff to enforce the rules during those times, while concentrating on other parking enforcement during the rest of the year.

Prior to the pandemic, she said, the city had six hourly workers on each winter night to check for parking violations. Now it’s planning to have three full-timers working primarily at night, with additional part-timers brought in as needed.

City Transportation Director Tom Lynch said he expects the number of tickets issued for alternate-side parking violations will increase as a result, but there will be “special emphasis during snow events.” He said those full-time workers will begin this winter and their shifts will include the 1-7 a.m. hours. Cox said that to make sure people have fair warning before getting a ticket, “we do a lot of education (about the rule) in the beginning of the season.”

City Finance Director David Schmiedicke did not respond to a request for comment about any effect less parking revenue has on the city budget, but Lynch said the “reduction in fine revenue is a very small portion” of the budget and that the “Parking Division is looking at revenue generation from all of the assets they are responsible for, seeking to increase revenue where it can.”

The office of Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway did not provide a comment on the ticket changes. City Council President Jael Currie did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is not about revenue,” Verveer said about increasing enforcement. “This is about trying to gain compliance.”

And yet people aren’t going to move their vehicles if they never see tickets, he said.

“This winter, supposedly things will be different,” he said. “We’ll see.”