Parking and Public Access to the Public University:

The Benefits of Building the WISC on Campus

We envision the Wisconsin Idea Science Center as a place to welcome people to campus every day in an organized way to experience science as exploring the unknown within a community of researchers and scholars.

Building the WISC on campus means that the entire campus can be the Destination for Exploration for our visitors, with the WISC serving as a gateway and a welcoming venue.

There are off-peak parking lots available in the central campus.

Many people have pointed out that parking will be a problem. Yes, parking on campus is a problem, even for people who work here, as well as for visitors.

Yet somehow athletics, art, music, theater and dance — let's call them sports and arts — manage to welcome large numbers of people to campus; we'll need to take a cue from them:

When do sports and arts schedule their public events?
How do sports and arts make best use of the available parking?
Why do sports and arts so value having venues on campus?

Off-peak and Convenient

Most sports and arts events are held at off-peak hours, from 4 PM to 11 PM and on weekends, which are times when parking is a much less constricting problem.

Pay-as-you-go entrance to Lot 17 near Engineering Hall

The WISC will need to do the same. We'll have to emphasize public events starting in the late afternoon and running til late in the evening.

Parking after 4 PM is especially available on the central part of campus, the location of the several sites under consideration for the WISC. This also matches when people are freer from work or school commitments.

Many museums, including some in Madison are open from 9 or 10 in the morning until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and often closed on Sundays or Mondays. The WISC would emphasize late afternoons, evenings and weekends — a departure from the traditional hours of most museums.

The WISC can take a cue from Barnes and Noble and what they did for public libraries: they showed libraries how important it is to stay open late, to encourage conversation and to create a social atmosphere where people can enjoy friends, books and ideas over coffee and a bagel. Likewise, the WISC can emulate the ways both the Memorial Union and the Elvejhem Art Museum combine educational, social, cultural and entertainment events.

Making Best Use of All Our Transportation Options

On weekdays during the school year the lion’s share of WISC visitors will likely be school classes and other larger groups. How do these groups tend to arrive on campus? They tend to come in school busses or in coaches, and the campus transportation system can better handle daytime parking for busses and coaches that bring 20 to 40 people each to campus, compared to cars that bring only two or three or four people.

Furthermore, the university now offers the 80 campus bus free to all. This bus serves visitors every day, all day and late into the evening. The 80 Bus will enable visitors coming to the WISC to make best possible use of available parking by giving drivers the option to park in lots or ramps distant from the WISC, and then finish their trip for free on the 80 Bus.

Imagine science fans tailgating before their museum visit.

Current campus long-range planning is emphasizing even better bus transit within the campus area. Moreover, in the future, light rail service along the line through campus will offer yet another alternative way to bring the public to campus and within steps of the sites currently under consideration for the WISC.

The Value of a Gateway Venue: Making the Campus the Destination for Exploration

The key for improving public access to the science resources of the campus is not to build the Wisconsin Idea Science Center off campus for the sake of convenient daytime parking for cars. It is fair to project that daytime parking will also be a problem if a science museum were sited on the Capitol Square or on State Street. Placing the Wisconsin Idea Science Center where daytime parking wouldn't be a problem would likely require a site so far from campus that we would lose the immeasurable benefits of making the whole campus the destination for exploration, and not just the WISC.

Rather the key for assuring public access is to welcome the public to campus especially at times convenient to them--after school, after work and on the weekends--times that conveniently happen to avoid the peak congestion on campus.

Last updated June 22, 2005

Contact: Tom Zinnen Dave Nelson webmaster