The city of Aurora is looking to increase parking prices at the city’s two Metra stations.
The proposal, set to go before the Aurora City Council on Tuesday, would increase parking prices from $2 per day or $42 for a monthly pass to $3 per day or $60 for a monthly pass. City officials say the change would bring the prices in line with other parking along the BNSF-Metra rail line, in particular matching the daily rates of Naperville’s parking lots at Metra stations.
Both Naperville and Aurora have parking lots at the BNSF-Metra line station on Route 59, which borders the two cities. Aurora also has parking lots at the BNSF-Metra line station at the Aurora Transportation Center on North Broadway near the city’s downtown.
Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, said at a meeting of the Aurora City Council’s Finance Committee on Nov. 13 that there was “no advantage” to keeping the daily rate at $2, as keeping the lower rate probably wouldn’t attract anyone from Naperville to park on the Aurora side.
The city is responsible for maintenance to the city’s two train stations, which is supposed to be financially self-sustaining through the collection of parking fees, according to Aurora Director of Public Facilities Derrick Winston.
Those fees haven’t increased since 2015, he told the Finance Committee on Nov. 13.
Before 2020, the fees were enough to sustain operations at the train station, but revenue dropped nearly to zero in spring 2020, Winston said. While revenue has been returning since the COVID-19 pandemic, it hasn’t risen much above half of what it was, he said.
Since the city has continued to maintain those stations despite the drop in parking revenue, it has needed to use reserve funds and to receive subsidies from other city funds, according to Winston. Even with Christkindlmarket bringing in $400,000 in parking revenue last year, he said, the maintenance operations still needed to be subsidized.
So, the increase in parking fees was proposed to rebuild those reserve funds and make those operations financially self-sustaining again, according to Winston.
City officials have been saying for months that the city’s 2026 budget is facing its own significant deficit and that the city’s current financial situation is one of the most serious it has ever faced. The city’s proposed general operating budget for 2026 has seen significant cuts throughout the process, officials have said, and it includes around 140 fewer positions.
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The Aurora City Council has recently approved or seen proposals for other steps to increase or stabilize revenue in other parts of the city budget, including an approved increase to the city’s hotel tax, a proposed increase in the number of gambling machines businesses are allowed to operate and the approved local continuation of a grocery tax set to otherwise expire statewide at the end of the year.
If the proposed increase to parking fees at city lots near Metra stations is approved by the Aurora City Council at the meeting Tuesday, the new fees would go into effect on Jan. 1, according to a staff report about the proposal.
The city’s Transportation Center near downtown has three parking lots with 799 daily and 479 monthly permit parking spaces, staff said in the report. The city-owned lot at the Metra station on Route 59 has 1,538 daily and 1,028 monthly parking spaces, the report said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
