I’ve found the parking lot signs aren’t that useful on the University of Wisconsin campus, if you’re not familiar with the various lots. Some lots require a permit, and some are metered parking. If you’re permit-less and looking for somewhere to park, the signs at the entryway to each lot are not that useful from a distance. Each has a red band at the top with white lettering indicating either “PERMIT REQUIRED” or “METERS ENFORCED” above the common “Monday-Friday, 7am-4:30pm”. From a distance, since both are red bands, and two words long, it’s hard to distinguish at a glance, before turning into the lot itself.

The UW parking map (http://transportation.wisc.edu/files/14_15ParkingMap.jpg) isn’t much more helpful, only differentiating the permit-vs.-meter lots with a “M” symbol on the metered lots.

So, I started tagging the parking lots in OpenStreetMap with the proper “access” tags, and hopefully some parking app can parse them and make an easier parking experience while on-campus.

The permit-required lots are:

access=private access:conditional=public @ Mo-Fr 00:00-07:00,16:30-24:00; Sa-Su 00:00-24:00

And the metered lots are:

access=public fee=yes @ Mo-Fr 07:00-16:30