Let’s move some parking meters

A plan for safer streets, faster buses, and fewer payouts to our parking meter overlords

Screenshot of the parking meter relocation simulator

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Nik Hunder is a policy analyst, researcher, and safe transportation advocate based in Chicago. He also writes at the Softer Side of Bonsai.

Few things are easier for Chicagoans to hate than our parking meter deal. Not only was the deal a bad case of financial mismanagement, but handing over our municipal assets to investment management companies in New York, Europe, Abu Dhabi meant losing control over how we manage our curb and street design. It has also forced the city to pay out millions of dollars in quarterly true-ups to meet the minimum revenue thresholds promised in the deal.

There is no way to turn the deal into a positive for Chicago. But by changing the locations and pricing of meters, we can make it easier to prioritize street safety and transit improvements, and eliminate future true-up payments. To do so, I have built an interactive map to illustrate how the city, if it so chooses, can relocate meters to improve street safety, bus travel times, and our city finances. You can view and customize your own results here.

Chicago and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad deal

Chicago’s contract to sell the city’s parking assets to Chicago Parking Meters Inc. (CPM) is so poorly regarded that no other city has dared to make a similar deal.¹ Many Chicagoans are familiar with the headline figure: for a one-time cash infusion of $1.15B, Chicago granted a consortium of investors (Chicago Parking Meters Inc., or CPM), for 75 years. CPM had recouped its initial investment within five years. They’ll keep cashing checks until 2083, estimated to be worth an additional $21B.

Chicago didn’t just hand over a stream of cash flows. To guarantee that the parking meter deal would continue to pay out for investors, the city also gave up a great deal of control over how its meters are managed. In particular:

• We lost the authority to determine how many meters could be placed. The city must have at least 30,000 meters that earn $2k+/year.²

• We gave up almost all control over how to set rates. Chicago cannot aggressively adjust meter rates to satisfy revenue requirements by simply moving the price point along a demand curve.

• We owe CPM money for the loss of in-service hours during special events, long-term construction, or when actual revenue falls below the approximate assessed value of $368.5M in revenue/year.

The city continues to incur quarterly true-up costs to CPM when it does not generate enough revenue. Since 2009, the city has paid $161M in true-up costs out of its own coffers rather than from those using the spots. The city cannot add more meters of its own (reserve meters) without CPM approval. It cannot lease additional capacity to a third party. If the meters generate more revenue than required, the excess can only be carried over for a single year to meet shortfalls in the future.³ It simply cannot fall short. If Chicago defaults on the deal, CPM retains the right to collect on the Remaining Amortized Value (the “unused” remaining value of the contract, worth $14.7M/year (2008), $23M/year-inflation adjusted) which, 17 years into the contract is worth $894M (2008) ($1.35B, inflation adjusted).

The City of Chicago did negotiate some retained powers:

• It can increase the hourly rate of the meters to keep pace with inflation + $0.25.⁴

• It has discretion on the number of meters in use between 30-45k, and can change the location of those meters.

• Any relocated meters do not inherit the characteristics of their previous location, which means the city can set new rates on meters that are moved.

One meaningful rate increase was negotiated from 2009 to 2013, so CPM could recoup its initial investment quickly.⁵ And as many know, the city keeps expired meter revenue.

Moving meters for safer streets and better buses

Current locations of meters follow a consistent pattern. They are placed either on major arterial roads or in zoned commercial districts; often both. Predictably, the same areas are also designated as bike routes and pedestrian streets, corridors “widely recognized as Chicago’s best example of pedestrian-oriented shopping districts” and meant to “ensure pedestrian safety and comfort, promote economic vitality and preserve the positive character of downtown’s most pedestrian-oriented streets.”⁶ That goal is incompatible with designating massive portions of the right-of-way for private vehicles.

If we do so properly, there is room to move and re-allocate our meter count while continuing to provide access to retail corridors. The city currently has 37,665 meters in use and is allowed to have as few as 30,000. There are only 2,355 meters on a designated pedestrian street, bicycle route, or Better Streets for Buses corridor. So while we can’t eliminate the deal, we can reallocate parking meters to make streetscape improvement easier, while also ensuring the city never pays true-up costs to CPM.

How meters can be relocated

To make the process easier, I built an interactive tool and map to model the various changes the city could make to its meters.

Substack does not allow for the embedding of interactive maps. I highly recommend you view the detailed proposal here as you read this section. If you’d like to customize your own model, you can do so here. After, if you would like to read more about the specific method used to determine optimal locations, this blog post is for you.

The model determines optimal locations for meter relocations based on Census, job type, commercial activity, paid+permit parking utilization rates, and existing safety infrastructure location data. New sites have to ensure enough revenue is generated by each spot or the City will still incur a true-up payment. Taken together, they also redistribute meters away from the loop and add paid parking capacity into neighborhood retail areas.

I built a scoring system to control the weight of individual priorities when determining a new location. The scoring excludes locations that:

• Are on a pedestrian street, existing bike route, or a future Better Streets for Buses corridor;

• Have free surface parking lot within 1/8mi; or

• Are inside or adjacent to a park.

The scoring system penalizes locations that:

• Are an existing free residential parking zone (low demand) or permit parking zones when utilization exceeded available space;

• Have low business license density; or

• Are located on residential roads, far from commercial activity.

The scoring prioritizes locations that are:

• Near business, commercial, or downtown zoning

• Near a high concentration of jobs or retail activity

• On non-bike route arterial routes, on minor arterials, and finally on residential streets

Many locations that were penalized saw surrounding areas boosted to maintain revenue levels. An example is Clark Street in Andersonville. Demand for spots could increase if it were pedestrianized even without parking on Clark. This is what happened to the temporary pedestrianization of Milwaukee Ave in 2025, an activation so popular that it is returning in 2026.

Most importantly, this proposal ensures that we don’t pay any more true-ups costs to CPM.

Outcome

These priorities create some common changes. Meter density shifts away from downtown and into high commercial activity corridors areas across the city. Parking on popular commercial corridors moves to residential side streets (capped at 20% of total block capacity) to allow for them to be converted to pedestrian-only.⁷

Meter rates are also updated. In some cases, that means neighborhood commercial corridors now see more mid-level (currently $4.75) and high-tier (currently $7) meters. Before, they only saw low-tier (currently $2.50) regardless of demand. Low value, $0.50/hour meters were entirely eliminated.⁸ The number of premium tier spots (currently $14) decreased overall and remained exclusive to downtown.

Left: Current meter placement in April 2026. Right: Revised meter placement

Existing Rates | Revised Rates

(Figure 1)            (Figure 2)

$0.50/hr                  -

$2.50/hr            $3.00/hr

$4.75/hr            $5.50/hr

$7.00/hr            $8.00/hr

$14.00/hr               -     

This decreases total spaces (19% cut), modestly increases rates (12.6% aggregated), and reduces meter concentration.⁹ Most importantly, it eliminates conflicts with active transportation infrastructure and prevents the city from having to incur true-up costs going forward.

Conclusion

The proposed version is one of many ways to relocate meters. There are certainly other variables to consider. One of those variables will inevitably be politics; everyone has an opinion about parking, and changes to meters require action by the City Council. To make this easier, I’ve included a sandbox version to test other variable weighting. It allows you to weigh the same variables in the above proposal and adjust accordingly. Individual meters can be relocated after setting top priorities.

But while there are a lot of ways to tweak the model, it is clear that our current approach is failing. Current parking meter allocations have left Chicago with more dangerous streets, slower buses, and true-up costs that we can ill afford. It’s time to move some meters.

1. Indianapolis did through ParkIndy, albeit with major revisions. Pittsburg was considering a similar deal but rejected a proposal by JPMorgan in 2010 after seeing how Chicago fared.

2. This condition only applies to the first two years.

3. The city can use credit to avoid paying a true up. Credit is earned by generating revenue in excess of the $368.5M floor. They did this once in 2022. Excess revenue appears as the System in Service percentage on the map’s dashboard.

4. A +$0.25 increase is a one-time allowable increase through the lifespan of the deal.

5. It did this by 2013, but the negotiations also produced an estimated savings of $1B (https://metroplanning.org/projects/innovative-infrastructure-delivery-chicago-parking-meter-analysis/)

6. Municipal Code of Chicago 17-04-0500

7. The permit zone utilization layer shows where additional residential capacity for this exists.

8. After relocating all 37,665 original meters, I removed roughly 7,000 underperforming meters. All previous $0.50 meters consistency underperformed and were removed in that sweep. Present day demand does not support the continued need for $0.50 meters.

9. CPM provides all payment terminals at no-cost to the city (the deal did eliminate the old, coin-operated meters the city used to have). The number of zones where there are terminals is not a binding constraint the city needs to try and minimize.