Case Study: City of Madison advances sustainable transit planning with UrbanFootprint

City of Madison Supports 2040 Comprehensive Plan with UrbanFootprint

The City of Madison, Wisconsin, partnered with UrbanFootprint as it prepared its 2040 Comprehensive Plan amid expectations of 25% population growth by 2040. A key challenge was understanding how future growth and a new bus rapid transit (BRT) system could affect transit access, social equity, public health, emissions, and other long-term community outcomes.

Using UrbanFootprint’s real-time impact analysis and scenario-planning tools, the city evaluated multiple BRT corridor and redevelopment options across metrics such as household costs, vehicle-miles traveled (VMT), residential water and energy use, and emissions. UrbanFootprint helped Madison quantify predicted outcomes, support transparent community discussion, reduce time spent on data preparation, and better assess how each scenario could improve transit ridership and lower VMT.

City of Madison

Ben Zellers

Planner