Airport Plans to Track Ride Share Cars

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Another fence is going up around Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. A geofence, that is.

The airport is looking into a system to track ride share companies like Uber and Lyft that frequently use the airport to conduct business, picking up and dropping off travelers. It already receives data from the companies, but is looking to independently verify it.

The airport collects fees from these companies in exchange for their use of the public airport to find riders for their private services. And in 2025, the airport is doubling down and charging a $3 fee for both pickups and drop offs. In the past the airport only charged for pickups.

The charges are not tacked onto the riders bills at the end of their ride. The companies are billed directly. The airport expects to bring in an additional $976,000 this year by adding drop-off fees. The pick-up and drop-off fees are nothing new for ride share companies: most airports around the country already charge them.

Currently, there is a geofence maintained by the companies that automatically makes the payment when cars pass over the digital boundary. The airport is soliciting vendors looking for a real-time tracking system to verify that the airport is collecting all the payments it is owed.

The airport wants a system with its own geofence and the ability to track licence plates, drivers and vehicles. The information would be reported to the airport through a web-based dashboard.

The airport bases its authority for collecting the fees in county ordinance. While the facility is owned by the county, it does not receive funding from county taxpayers to operate. Instead it relies on fees from air carriers and, to a lesser degree, a mix of state and federal revenue.

The airport views the ride-share fees are a way for users of the airport — in this case ride share companies — to help pay for the facility they use.