City of Evanston Parking Study

Home to Northwestern University and located on the coast of Lake Michigan, the City of Evanston, is a vibrant suburb of Chicago with a diverse set of parking needs. The City manages three parking garages, 37 off-street parking lots, and metered on-street parking throughout the City’s downtown. WGI was tasked with reviewing its parking infrastructure, policies, and fee structures, comparing its parking demands and plans to other peer cities nationwide, and providing recommendations to keep the City relevant and attuned to its ever-changing needs. The project team collaborated closely with the City to nail down a list of 20 comparable US cities that would be used in the peer review. WGI performed extensive research to uncover commonalities in population, climate, infrastructure, event demands, and parking requirements in transit-oriented development zones and developed a questionnaire distributed to these cities, seeking relevant parking data that would ultimately inform the recommendations made to the City of Evanston.