Parking Management Solutions

Parking and transportation demand management (TDM) go hand in hand. In fact, both disciplines are often managed by the same group of people in a university parking and transportation department or municipal parking authority. And this year, for the first time, IPI and ACT - Association for Commuter Transportation - joined forces to present a day long joint summit.

Most of the discussion centered on parking management systems and strategies that promote use of alternative transportation, reduction of mandatory parking  requirements for developers, and improving the customer's experience during multimodal trips - when they drive part of the way and then park and ride public transit.

I was particularly interested in understanding what T2 Systems, as a parking management system provider, can do to support these TDM initiatives, and the speakers delivered. Lots of ideas for smart people at T2 to think about. One in particular sticks out: how can a parking system support the concept of shared parking? If anyone has ideas, please send them to me.

Oh, and in keeping with the spirit of the conference, I took Megabus from Indianapolis to Chicago instead of driving my car. 

I was at T2’s Datacenter the other night, staring at the symphony of blinking lights of the servers and network equipment that make up the Hosting Environment.  In this environment, we host over 160 customer’s parking operations.  To the customer, it’s an application like no other in the industry – allowing a true Unified parking solution with a plethora of business and industry-centric features wrapped around fantastic support and performance.

To me, at the core, it’s a combination of cutting edge servers and equipment transmitting billions upon billions of ones and zeroes, all utilizing amazing technology from top vendors and producing powerful results.

Sound like a lot of adjectives and overly descriptive? Let me simplify it even for myself. The famous science fiction writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  I think that’s a great description of what T2 and other companies living in the technology cloud do every day – deliver magic.  Behind the scenes of the Flex Web Page customers' back offices access, or the eBusiness webpage utilized by your customers, are some of the most amazing pieces of technology all working in efficient harmony to process, store, transmit and keep secure your valuable business data. 

I’ve been at T2 for several years and have watched the environment grow from infancy to a powerful showplace of what a Private Cloud really is and should be (there’s an inside joke in the T2 Hosting Team – “we were in the cloud before the cloud was cool.”)  In my line of work, Information Technology, it’s so easy to get caught up in the technical details and live and breathe the infrastructure that sometimes, you seem to  forget what your technology is actually providing: solutions to businesses that are run by real people with real needs and real expectations.

And to me, that’s what my job and my coworkers are all about. We take the technical tools and infrastructure and morph and model it into an efficient machine and service that allows our customer’s to excel at their industry – parking management.  We’re proud of our results and of our systems, and we take pride in our offerings.

So what does all this mean to me, the Analyst of T2’s Hosting Team? My goal is simple: the next time you sell a Permit online, look up a citation across a complex system using an advanced query, or monitor your garage from a webpage… and someone asks you – “Hey, how does all that work?”

You can respond, “I’m not sure – I suppose’ it’s a little bit of magic.”

I just passed my four-year mark working in parking. After nearly nineteen years in banking, it took me a while to really understand. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a long, long way from being prepared to sit for the CAPP test,  but I think I can honestly say "I get it" when taking about Parking Access and Revenue Control, Parking Garage Software, Handheld Ticket Writers, and a lot of what goes into managing them.

For me, all that complexity translates back to computing systems that talk to all of those advanced parking solutions that are out there in the world dealing with all of the parkers. Even in the summer when many of T2's customers that use our software as a campus parking solution are at a relatively low volume of parkers, we're seeing around 20,000 transactions a day amounting to around a million dollars and that's just for our customers that use our hosted parking system software. A similar number run their own computer systems running T2's parking software.

Each of those transactions generated has a "footprint" on the servers that we use to host. They translate to memory usage, CPU usage, and disk reads/writes. As a geek and a numbers guy, it is absolutely fascinating to watch the metrics as the complex transactions are processed and completed. The main reason we monitor everything that goes on in our Hosting Environment so that we can make sure there's enough hardware to support all of our customers efficiently and well, but I still think all of those metrics are just plain cool.

Happy Parking.

So I was one of those folks that stood in line to buy an iPad 2. I've never been one to do that kind of thing, but this thing just looked cool to me. It is cooler than I ever expected. It has changed the way I access the online world. That got me thinking...

How many of the consumers that are accessing the parker side of T2's enterprise parking management software are using mobile devices? We took a quick and informal look at our the logs from the parker portion of our parking enforcement system and saw that a whopping 17% of our activity was coming from mobile browsers like iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. That's a lot of people buying permits, paying parking citations, and generally doing business far, far away from a desk.

If parkers can pay citations before they even pull out of the parking space where they were cited, that's a lot less Parking Citation Collections to worry about. In some cases, it means that citations are going from Handheld Ticket Writers to completed payments in a matter of minutes.

I'm going to keep watching the logs. I want to see how this changes over time. Happy parking.

As you know T2 Systems develops parking solutions. We offer software like permit management and access control, we offer equipment like revenue control equipment and handheld ticket writers and we also offer parking ticket collection services through CCS. Who do we offer those products to? Glad you asked, last year at our annual User Group conference we put together a short video concentrating on our customer successes. We did this because we wouldn't be here without our customers and we wanted to highlight a few facts and figures from them. Feel free to watch the T2 Customer Success video:

You know, we Americans have it really pretty easy...parking included. Yeah, we complain about having to pay for parking and when we don't, we complain about having to pay that parking ticket. But really for the most part, we are pretty lucky. We have technology to help us find parking spaces, automatic access control and revenue control facilities to get us parked quicker and for the most part, we have paved lots and garages.

Recently, I was in Roatan, Honduras and snapped this photo of a parking lot. I tried to be the good T2 corporate citizen and sell them a new parking management system, but they weren't biting. Maybe next time... :)

Okay, so lately I have been spending a rather high percentage of my time at the amusement parks of central Florida. The weather has been beautiful and I just like to get out and about...people watch so to speak. What amazes me though, is the parking operations at the different parks. For example, the Disney parks use manned lots to control parking. You pay your $14 fee to gain entrance to the attendant and follow the cones until you get to the designated parking row where several additional parking attendants guide you into your space for the day - ones even on a Segway (which I think is really cool, but...I digress). The same work flow happens over at Universal Studios with one exception, you get to park in a parking garage instead of having the sun beat down on your car in a lot. Other than that, everything is the same - okay no Segway here but everything else is the same.

So I guess what I am getting at is, aren't they even the least bit worried about having that much cash exchange hands without some kind of control? I mean, yeah most times I go through the gates, the parking attendant rings up the money in the cash register so there is no question. But I am sure there are times when it is busy that the cashier doesn't ring up a transaction, for the sake of saving time.  I think this would be a perfect location to have a parking management system. Maybe something like T2's PermitNOW (shameless plug inserted here!) I mean, in order for the parking permits to be printed, a transaction has to take place. So whether the customer is paying by cash or credit card, the parking attendant runs it through the handheld ticket writer and out comes a parking permit for the day. The beauty of this is, since payment has to be made in order to generate a parking permit, everything is trackable through the parking management software on the back end.

Well, seeing as Disney has been in business for a few decades, I guess they probably have this parking thing down, but I say, there is always room for improvement:)

Selling parking spaces is kind of like airlines selling seats, or hotels selling room-nights.  The supply of parking is pretty much a fixed quantity:  it's not like new parking spaces are made available every day (or planes suddenly fly with more seats, or hotels suddenly have a new wing of rooms to sell).

Because the quantity is fixed you want to maximize the usage of the spaces (or seats or rooms) by filling those spaces every day.  A day that a parking space remains empty generates no revenue - just like an empty seat on a plane that has taken off.

What's interesting about selling out the spaces - but not overselling them - is that it serves two purposes:  (1) it maximizes revenue at the current price, and (2) it maximizes the number of satisfied customers.  Oversell may generate more revenue but it dissatisfies some parkers who can't find space.  Underselling generates less revenue and potentially fewer total satisfied customers.

In the case where your supply of parking spaces or airplane seats or hotel rooms is mostly constant you have to use pricing to try to manage the demand.  Having a number of parking spaces is actually irrelevant, what you want to do is create a scarcity of available spaces.  The key is to find the price at which all the spaces sell, but no more than all of them.  Economically speaking, this matches the supply and the demand in a way that satisfies the most people at the highest price.  Making the price higher will drive away customers, and making the price lower will result in a shortage of spaces.

Airlines realized this a long time ago, and have come up with many ways of trying to fine tune pricing so that the passenger load factor (the ratio of full seats to available seats on a given flight) is as close to 100% as possible.  Pricing for a seat on a particular flight can be revised or altered several times a day by computer systems trying to sell out the plane.

In what ways to airlines use creative pricing?  We're all familiar with these.

Probably the most common pricing differentiator is by using a "class" system - first class, business class and coach class are three differentiators.  The parking equivalent could be the garage near the building versus the economy lot further away.

Additionally, seats within a class might be priced differently.  In coach the airline passenger has the option of paying a premium for an exit-row seat, or for a seat with extra legroom.  The parking equivalent here could be reserved spaces near a door, or perhaps parking in a nested area on a given floor of a facility.

Airlines also set their pricing based on the desirability of the flight.  Morning and evening flights are more popular than afternoons, so these are priced higher.  Wednesday is unpopular for flying so it's cheaper, while Friday and Sunday are the most traveled and subsequently higher priced.  Parking does the same thing:  early bird specials encourage parking before the rush hour; while special events might cause prices to spike on a weekend.

What is a little more unusual about the airline seat-pricing model is that the airline is aggressive at selling out the seats.  The airline computer systems and predictive modeling will change the price of a seat multiple times, even in the same day.  If the flight looks like it will sell-out then the remaining seats (the scarce ones) increase in value.  Now imagine if parking operations did this - varied the price of the stall based on the number of remaining stalls!

There is a parking operation attempting to do this.  The SF park project in San Francisco has received a lot of parking press lately on their goal of adjusting meter prices monthly so as to create a small amount of empty spaces on each block-face.  The idea is that parking should be mostly full most of the time.  The City plans to combine parking management software, space detection equipment, and a variety of metered parking devices to create gather sufficient data to price spaces monthly.  Too much availability?  Drop the price.  Parking too scarce?  Raise the price.  It's the free market at work!

It's a simple concept but requires a complex implementation.  Many eyes in our industry are watching to see how this works.  In terms of the airline's sophisticated daily pricing adjustments, these monthly parking updates are as close as we'll get for a while.  But rest assured that if this experiment is a success then you'll see more and more parking operations pricing like airlines.

Did you know the iPhone 5, expected to be released at some point this year, is rumored to have Near Field Communications Technology (NFC) on it?  This has the potential to change your customer's mobile phone into an access control device and a payment method within your Parking Access and Revenue Control system.

Who says being a parking lot attendant is a dead end job? Well those of us in the parking industry sure don't think so. I mean, there is a plethora of things one can do here in the parking world. And parking can even be a springboard for bigger and better things.

Take Michael Bloomberg for example. The billionaire mayor of New York City - yeah that Michael Bloomberg. Well guess what? He got his start in the parking industry. Yep, he was a parking lot attendant while working his way through college. Now, I doubt he had any advanced parking management system to track scofflaws, etc. But I personally think it is rather inspiring to see someone of this stature start at the bottom and work his way up and for the record, I think it is really cool that he started in parking. 

I've spent the past 8.5 years in parking, and have seen many sides of campus parking solutions.  The one that usually brings me an "instant bond" with our customers is the 2 years or so that I spent handling citation appeals. 

Aside from being a key component of parking citation management, citation appeals can also provide a delightful source of entertainment.  Whether it be the employee who threatened my life from the same "anonymous" email address he used to file his appeal, or the grad student who provided photographic evidence that there were no "No Parking" signs where he had left his vehicle.  Granted, his vehicle was 20 feet back from the sidewalk next to the tree line, but he was technically correct.

My personal favorite is still one undergrad who didn't seem to grasp the notion that what she put in an email could come back to haunt her down the line.  After offering up several creative activities I could perform upon myself with a BBQ fork, she then followed up by informing me that she had "broken more than her fair share of gate arms over the years" and inviting me to "just try and prove that!"  So I hit reply, CCed the dean of students, and sent her the one-word reply of "Done."  I miss those crazy kids sometimes.

I think that if I were still working in the operational side of campus parking solutions, I'd have to take advantage of some of the broader functionality offered by today's parking system software.  Perhaps a custom field added to appeals records where you could rate them by the creativity of their appeal?  Then, when I needed a little pick-me-up, I could run a query to find all my favorites. 

I left those appeals behind when I came to T2, but I still have that grad student's picture on the wall above my desk.  Just a little reminder that, no matter how delusional, those folks really did believe they were in a legal space. . .

I remember getting my first parking ticket - I knew it was coming long before it ever arrived on my windshield and it was gut wrenching knowing it would be there when I returned to my vehicle. 

Let's just say my keys went missing one night while enjoying a good time among friends in lovely downtown Boulder.  Thankfully I had a friend drive me home anyway, but when I went to go get my car the next morning I had no keys.  Although I desperately tried to return before the parking meter enforcement began, I wasn't able to coordinate a ride and a locksmith in time.  Reality sunk in that I'd be receiving my first ever parking ticket.

This is not a big deal, right? Now, you've forgotten where I said I was -  Boulder.  Parking tickets ARE a big deal! Ultimately I decided I should pay it and not make this a huge moment in history.  I wanted to pay online as I thought many city parking solutions allow for that.  Much to my disappointment an online payment option was not available, so I mailed in a check (on time, mind you).

Little did I know at the time it would be a foreshadow of my future career.  A year or two later I went to work for the city and was heavily involved in the implementation of a new parking ticket management system.  I worked very closely with our vendor, T2 Systems in making sure our new parking management system was successful - including offering online citation payments and appeals.  I loved working in T2 Flex and taking the trainings offered by T2 that not only increased my knowledge about Flex but also all the available reporting options.

Not a long time later I found myself working at T2!  I love sharing my personal experience working with a parking management system as a customer while introducing new concepts to our clients such as an online parking payment system (which Boulder now has - thanks to T2!).


 

Recently I was talking the manager of the company that cleans our office building about facility security to insure that they were following all appropriate security procedures in our space. During that discussion, he told me a story about one of their employees that had a very bad day. The cleaning company has a company-wide policy against propping open doors (even for just a minute). This policy exists to protect their clients as well as their employees. One of their employees didn't follow that policy one night. He had a bunch of boxes to carry out to the dumpster and wanted to do it as quickly as possible. With all of the best intentions, he propped open the door figuring that it would only be for a few minutes. Unfortunately for him, some "bad guys" saw him do that. While he was inside getting a load of boxes, they came in, beat him badly enough to subdue him, and then stole a bunch of computers from the office he was cleaning. Fortunately he fully recovered physically. Unfortunately, his company had to fire him that same day for violating security policies and causing the cleaning company’s client to be victimized because of that violation. Double ouch.

So what does that have to do with Parking, Parking System Software, and Parking Access and Revenue Control? It is all about balancing security with convenience and expediency. Lots of parking facilities accept credit cards. If you take credit cards, you’re subject to PCI compliance rules. Much like the unfortunate employee in the cleaning crew, if you take shortcuts that compromise security, your parking facility could face some rather severe consequences. A parking lot can't be beat up or fired, but your bank could take away your ability to accept credit cards, you could be subject to fines and even huge civil penalties resulting from a credit-card related security breach. When an important or valued customer asks you to "just keep their credit card on file" or emails you their credit card information, it is tempting (and often good customer service) to just do what they ask. Unfortunately, like our ill-fated cleaner, doing that can get you in a lot of trouble.

The key is finding a way to balance good service and following good security practices. Unfortunately, security and convenience are inversely related. It is a heck of a lot more convenient to leave your home unlocked rather than fumble with keys when you come home in the dark with your arms full of groceries, kids, or both, but most of us don’t do that. We lock our homes (and often arm alarm systems) because we want and need to take reasonable precautions to keep our homes safe.

T2 Systems has recently completed our PCI-DSS Assessment to become a Service Provider. As a result of that project, we have been listed on the Visa Global List of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers (http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/cisp-list-of-pcidss-compliant-service-providers.pdf). This is a long, complicated, expensive process, but it was well worth it for us and for our customers. By T2 being a PCI-DSS Service Provider, our Advanced Parking Solutions customers have a lot less PCI-related work ahead of them by using the integrated Parking Payment Systems within our products. Our customers still can’t keep credit card numbers on post-it notes, but they have a whole lot less computer system work to do. Regardless of whether or not you are a T2 Systems customer, diligence with credit cards is critical. Credit card breaches typically don’t result in physical beatings, but if you have to deal with a breach, you may almost envy the guy that was only beat up and fired.

I am a theme park junkie. I love to go and ride the roller coasters and just generally have fun. Recently, I was at Disney's Hollywood Studios and rode the Rock 'n Roller Coaster. Well, as I am standing in the queue line, what do I see:



Nope, can't get away from parking - even on a roller coaster.

This made me think. Although some venues handle event parking from time to time, these theme parks do it every day. Thousands of parking transactions happen business as usual. So then, my question is how do they audit these parking attendants? Do these theme parks have a parking management system? If not, how do the ensure every car has paid in some way or another? This is a question I think I should do a little more research on.
 
Anyone up for a coaster?  

So, you are a parking organization that is stuck in the 1960's handwriting parking tickets. There's no budget for handheld ticket writers for all of your parking enforcement officers, so some of them use the old ticket book to write up parking violations. Well, as you and I both know, there are often challenges with writing those parking citations; it can be difficult reading the officers' handwriting (especially if it is like mine) and the time and effort required to locate and manually input the data into the parking management system can be significant.

T2's new eTicketBook software eliminates the hassles associated with the handwritten tickets by enabling officers to issue parking citations from their in-vehicle computers and automatically upload the citation data into the T2 Flex parking management system.

Cool alert!! The new eTicketBook software also integrates with AutoVu a mobile license plate recognition (LPR) system developed by Genetec.

Wow...I have no idea what Bob Dylan was trying to say with those words of wisdom(it's a little before my time). However, I think it is pretty cool that someone like Bob Dylan would even reference a parking meter in a song. That being said, let's get to the meat of this blog...

HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY PARKING METER! Yes, three quarters of a century ago, on July 16, 1935, the parking meter was born in Oklahoma-as was an entire industry. You see, shortly after the first meter was installed, parking tickets came around and of course parking enforcement officers were right there too-only back then, people referred to them as "meter maids".

As seen in some of my previous blogs, joining the parking industry isn't normally your first thought upon earning that college degree, but why not? We have enforcement officers. We work with governments, universities, the private sector and even hospitals. The parking industry is international-just about every country has some sort of parking controls in place. The technology behind parking is constantly being upgraded and tested including things like parking management software, handheld ticket writers, parking pay-by-phone, parking apps for smart phones and of course the new multispace parking meters.

I am pretty sure when Carl Magee developed and installed that first meter, he had no idea he was igniting this industry and in essence changing the world-some think for the better! So, thanks Carl. It is because of you I have a job. And when I tell people I work for a software company that develops parking software, I get that strange look which is always fun.

1. A parking space is like a lawsuit... once you get one you don't want to lose it.

2. Parking at the mall is like the waiting room of a psychiatrist... a collection of people seeking validation.

3. A parking ticket is like bird poop... someting undesirable that shows up unexpectedly on your windshield.

4. Being a parking manager is like a squirrel getting ready to hibernate... you've got to keep track of a zillion nuts.

5. Parking is like paint-by-numbers... results are best when you stay inside the lines.

6. A parking meter is like a pet dog... if you don't feed it then it could come back to bite you later.

7. A manual parking operation is like the BP oil spill... leakage everywhere, no accountability, and a mess that will take years to clean up!

In my last blog entry, I said I thought I should stick to what I know (technology) and not dive too deeply into the industry side of parking that many people know so much better. I'll be keeping that in mind again today. So last month I went to the IPI (International Parking Institute) Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. This was my second IPI (after a bit over three years working in the technology side of the parking industry).

After seeing everything there, I have to say that I'm proud to work for T2. I knew we had some pretty cool stuff (end of shameless plug), but it really hit home how much T2 stood out in that room. Don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming anybody. I'm just so accustomed to thinking about technology meaning servers and terabytes of storage and hosting an Advanced Parking Solution. That makes it easy to forget that a lot of the industry has nothing to do with computers and that technology in parking often has nothing to do with computers.

T2 sells Parking Garage Software, Parking Citation Collections, Campus Parking Solutions, Handheld Ticket Writers and a whole lot more cool parking Technology. That's all cool stuff and I love working with it, but how cool is it to sell a giant ice melting machine that you can drive around. I may have lots of cool servers with a bunch of cool blinking lights, but I can't push a button to melt a bunch of snow off of a parking lot. That's got to be a lot more fun than making something go away with the delete key. Most interesting to me was all of the technology in that melting machine. It (and a few other booths) made me realize that lots of parking technology has to do with fuel efficiency and reliability without having even one server. That said, I think the melter had a few blinking lights so it still made me smile.

Happy Parking!

Ok, I don't consider myself a lazy person... I like to walk, bike ride, swim; I always choose the stairs over the elevator (unless we're talking about more than 5 floors of course), and I get peeved whenever I see the same person circling a parking lot or parking garage multiple times just so they can get the closest parking space available.  I just think that's ridiculous...by the time they find something, I'm already in the store getting my stuff done!

However, I must admit that there are definitely times when I sooo want to take advantage of the new "mommy" (or should I say "parent") parking spaces that many stores and other areas now provide - even when I don't have my kids with me!  How horrible is that??  Have you seen these spaces?  They usually are indicated by a drawing on the space that shows a parent with a car seat, stroller or other contraption for transporting your children.  And even though my kids aren't with me, the car seats in the back are clearly visible.  Would anyone really see me walk out of the car without the kids?  Is there an enforcement officer walking the grocery store parking lot with a handheld ticket writer making sure that you really do have your kids with you?  Would they really give me a parking ticket or citation?

Believe me, there have been days when I'm so tired and there are clearly no spaces that are close - so I've been tempted to snag one of the "parent" spaces, even without the kids.  For those of you who may watch "Desperate Housewives", there was an episode in which one of the wives (Gabby) mis-used her husband's handicapped parking hangtag - just so she could be close and not have to walk far in her high heels.  Does my tempatation put me in the same category as her?  I certainly hope not!

Let's face it - there are times when we all want to park our car as close to our destination as possible...there are days when we just don't want to walk it.  As one who works for a parking management solution provider, I understand the importance of parking rules.  That's what keeps me employed!  Businesses, cities/municipalities, colleges and universities all need rules, and ways to manage those rules and all of us that park.  Why else would there by the need for parking system software, parking permit management systems, access and revenue control systems, and a ton of other parking management solutions?

It's because at the end of the day, we're all selfish - willing to fight, drive around, waste valuable time - and break the rules, in order to snag that coveted close parking space!  We all just might as well admit it!

You know, there is a joke that goes around the office every once in a while...where were you when you chose parking as a career? It's a joke because no one goes through college and says "Hmmmmm, parking seems like a fulfilling career."  Parking chooses you, not the other way around. Well last year, we decided to find out the different paths our employees and some of our customers took to get into parking. Some are pretty funny and some...well you've just gotta shake your head in disbelief:)...

Here is one story about how T2 Systems VP of Industry Solutions got into parking:

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 

Watch for more to come and if you have your own story, let me know at sfaulkenberry@t2systems.com.