Parking Enforcement Systems

I was the lucky T2 Systems representative today at a ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the launch of new pay-by-phone services in the City of Houston, Texas.  And by lucky - I do mean that! It was a pleasure to meet so many great people - our great customers at the city, our great Parkmobile partners, and Houston Mayor Annise Parker.

For those cities and municipalities out there that may be looking to upgrade and improve your parking solution and your parking management, Houston is an excellent example to look to.  A T2 customer for a little over two years, Houston uses the T2 parking enforcement (parking citation) and parking permit management solution.  However, the city understands that in order to get more people to its thriving - and beautfiul - downtown area, they need to make parking easy and convenient. 

Now drivers can pay for parking through their cell phone.  During my very short comments at the event today, I mentioned how our mobile phones are so much a part of our lives; we surf the net, we check e-mail, and we make purchases.  Why not use them to pay for parking?  The City of Houston - and many other cities - have embraced this technology whole-heartedly, and their constituents are better off for it.

But this solution doesn't just make life easy for customers - it makes life a little easier for the enforcement officers, too! Information about the status of the parking meters is sent to their T2 handheld ticket writers in real-time, making enforcement officers more efficient and reducing errors.  It's a great, integrated parking enforcement system that benefits the parking operation and the city's constituents.

Occasionally I still find it funny that I work in parking.  The parking industry is something we sometimes take for granted, but it was great to see that my colleagues and my great customers in Houston - as well as city officials - understand the importance of how parking, when managed properly, can make a night out, a shopping visit, or a walk downtown not only hassle-free, but super convenient, too. 

Great job Houston and Parkmobile!

One of the cool features of the Canadian Parking Association annual conference is Lunch with a Parking Doctor, where delegates come with their parking management ailments and get a prescription for the cure from experienced professionals in the parking business. Sounds, great, doesn't it?

Since I have never managed a parking operation, and since my primary goal at the Conference is to meet with T2 customers and others in the industry to learn about trends and needs in parking enforcement, permit management, acess and revenue control and event parking,  I am typically the patient at these lunches. But not this year.

I was summoned to one of the tables by CPA's Sandra Smith and given a patient to consult with. To be honest, I did suffer a short moment of panic (did I mention I had never run a parking operation?). But then I summoned all the knowledge I had gained over the years from my friends and customers who run some of the most advanced parking operations in North America, took a deep breath, and started the consultation.

The patients were quite new to parking and I actually was able to provide them with reasonable recommendations. Their need was to increase revenue from a downtown garage in close proximity to an arena that was only used for monthly parkers. Here was my prescription: 

1) Implement a Parking Access and Revenue Control System, collect and analyze occupancy by different groups (residents, employees, etc.) by time of day and day of the week. Then allocate identified open capacity to transient parkers.
2) Make the building security card the parking credential for Parking Access Control.

3) Use the relationship with the arena management group to start pre-selling parking online when patrons buy event tickets, to drive event parking customers to your facility.

4) Offer online coupons to parkers to attract them to your facility.

If you have other ideas please send them to me and I will share with my patients during the next consultation.

Recently, I got a question from a customer about PCI – one of the many that I answer on a regular basis - and it caused me to pause and think about what PCI means for T2 and our customers. One of the things I'm very proud of about the T2 Systems Hosted Parking Solution is that we're a PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider. That said, PCI is a *pain*. It is a really big pain to become a Level 1 Service Provider. It is expensive. It is time-consuming. It is difficult. So why do we do it? So our customers will have Parking Access and Revenue Control systems, parking permit and enforcement systems and eBusiness solutions that require a lot less work on their part to become PCI compliant. We're already hard at work on meeting all of the compliance standards of PCI 2.0. It is better that we do the work once, for all of our Hosted customers, than require that each one go through the process on their own.

Most PARCS solutions are validated to PA DSS 1.x. Like T2, they're working on PCI 2.0. The key difference is that the PCI 2.0 compliant version of T2 Flex comes as part of the customers’ subscription at no additional cost. And the substantial hardware upgrades for the server environment, which can cost tens of thousands, are taken care of by T2 as part of our hosting. And no expensive upgrades to peripheral devices like fee computers are required.

Lower cost and less work are always good.

T2's Hosting Environment includes a dedicated PCI Card Processing environment, and it is T2 that does the upgrade work to the hardware and software as all of the compliance work for PCI. For all of the pain that PCI compliance induces, it is intended to protect merchants and cardholders from many of the modern dangers associated with credit cards.

Security is important. Our focus on security makes it easier for our customers to focus on their parking operations.

Cambridge Artist-in-Residence Sees Poetry in Traffic Enforcement

The Cambridge Arts Council (CAC) and the Department of Traffic, Parking and Transportation (TPT) are jointly presenting a public art project from September 7 - November 17, 2010 by artist Daniel Peltz that offers a poetic interpretation of language typically used in parking enforcement.  
 

As artist-in-residence with the Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department for a week in January 2010, the artist shadowed TPT workers and interviewed employees in a variety of roles. As a result of this experience, Peltz was "struck by the complex humanity, warmth and humor" in the staff of the department, something missing from the world of the parking regulations they are charged with enforcing.  
 

Throughout the spring, Peltz developed his project, entitled Crossing Non-Signalized Locations, into a suite of four actions that bring wonder and curiosity to the language of parking regulations: (1) several new street signs designed by the artist and placed in unlikely locations around the City for the next few months to be discovered and pondered;

(2) a re-designed parking ticket envelope that introduces a series of yoga postures for giving and receiving parking citations, inviting us to imagine a more peaceful exchange between Parking Control Officers and car owners; (3) "10,000 Excuses", a large-scale wall drawing in the CAC Gallery (2nd floor of the City Hall Annex), composed from the archive of "excuses" residents have written and submitted in past parking disputes

-- City staff and the public may choose an anonymous "excuse" and re-write it on the wall, transforming the archive into a composite portrait of life in the city; (4) a fictional parking regulation authorizing "soft-booting," in which a stuffed fabric parking "boot" is fabricated in the atrium near the TPT offices. 
 

Cars and the spaces they use are a significant feature of our City, necessarily regulated to ensure the efficient flow of urban activity.
 

The relationship between municipal authority and the public around parking enforcement is rich with expressive language and emotion. In supporting the ability of artists to offer a new perspective on our lives, the Department of Traffic, Parking and Transportation and the Cambridge Arts Council invite all residents to experience and participate in this unique public art project, Crossing Non-Signalized Locations.  

A reception with the artist present will be held at the Cambridge Arts Council's CAC Gallery (344 Broadway) on Tuesday, September 7, from 6-8 p.m. For more information, call 617-349-4389 or visit:

www.cambridgema.gov/CAC/ <http://www.cambridgeartscouncil.org/> and click on the Of, By and For Link.

So here is the story 

I always wanted to teach and coach.  I went to school, got a job out of college and started teaching and coaching,  In the early 80’s, enrollment declined and there were layoffs.  I was laid off in 1983.  I worked many odd jobs to pay the bills.  That included working at a department store, being a nanny (I really am not a big fan of kids), and running a convenience store/gas station. 

In late 1984, there was an article in the Allentown, PA newspaper that reported that the city was forming a new Parking Authority  to run the 2 garages the city built and do all the enforcement for the city.  Friends of mine encouraged me to apply. 

I applied and got called for an interview.  I was working for a company called Hess Gas at the time and managing the convenience store/gas station.  Hess employees all had to wear these really ugly WHITE uniforms with a green stripe down the side of the leg and the sleeve.  We had really strict rules and I was not allowed to leave so I scheduled the interview for my lunch time and went to city hall in Allentown in my lovely white Hess uniform.  I walked in and it was the Mayor, the head of our Economic Development department, the Chief of Police and the consultant for the city at the time (Barbara Chance) Barbara is one of the leading consultants in the industry today. 

My first line as I introduced myself was that I knew how important first impressions were in the interview process so I took all morning to decide EXACTLY what to wear.  At that moment, they decided I had the right warped sense of humor for a start up parking authority and was hired on the spot.  The next 23 years was ‘the rest of the story’ 

Linda L. Kauffman 

We are back from the annual T2 company meeting. The meeting was a huge success. We learned about new solutions coming from T2 including the new T2 branded parking access and revenue control hardware. This is cool, T2 Systems now has our own brand of revenue control hardware. This means we offer not only the parking industry's first unified software solution where parking operations can manage both the permits and enforcement and the access and revenue control portions of parking in one web based, fully hostable system, but we also offer the parking access and revenue control equipment in conjunction with our distributor partners. Pretty awesome, huh?!

Back to the T2 Systems company meeting. I promised some photos in my last blog, so below you will see T2 in action at the Shepherd Center. There we cleaned up a bit and installed new patios for the community.
 

Coming soon...IPI updates (and maybe some pics)..so stay tuned


 

As part of my daily activities here in marketing at T2 Systems, I scan the Internet for interesting parking stories and information. I came across this one yesterday from Reno and had to share it:

 

Meter maid Barbara Cardwell had her first memorable brush with an irate motorist when she started ticketing illegally parked cars in Reno two decades ago.

"I saw him in the (scooter's) rear-view mirror and he was running very fast up First Street, trying to catch up with me, and waving a ticket in his hand," she said. "He was yelling, 'I'm handicapped! I'm handicapped!'"

 

Running up the street waiving his parking ticket in the air yelling "I'm handicapped!"...


...I've got nothin :)