Stef's Parking Solution

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.

Hello!

Since many of you are smack dab in the middle of permit season, I thought it would be approporiate to re-post something our own Maggie Vercoe, Director of Client Engagement wrote last year:

We are in the thick of Parking Permit Season!  It requires capitalization because of the sheer craziness of it.  Universities especially across the country are bracing themselves for the onslaught of students, staff, faculty, etc to hit their offices and their web pages to get their prime parking permits.

If you are just reading this, and haven't begun your planning, you might be in trouble.  Grab the bottle of Jack and hide under your desk until it blows over.

In seriousness, there are a lot of things that you can do to get through the season with little pain. 

1. Plan, Plan, and Plan.  Run reports over the last year in this date range to see what sales you did, by customer type, by permit location, permit type, and location of purchase.  This will help you to plan your communications to your customer.  For example, if you had more purchases in your office than online, now is the time to communicate to your customers what a great web page you have and how easy it is to purchase a parking permit online!

2. Map it out!  Consider laying out all of your parking permit configuration in a spreadsheet, for example.  This will help you identify all of your pricing structures, rules around your permits, and keep you organized.  It will make configuring them in your database easier every year if you maintain the copy.

3. Plan out what the week will look like.  Staff accordingly.  If possible, over-staff.  There could be lines out the door.  It may be useful to have someone handing out materials while you wait.  Rutgers University used to have a tent set up to shield the heat and cold beverages while people waited.  If you have to allow people to purchase in your office, this is fantastic customer service for a Department that is not always so liked by its customers!

4. If you do online parking permit sales, make sure that you have tested out everything with your new rules, permits, and pricing in a test environment.  This includes test transactions through to your payment gateway and file transfers to payroll or the bursar.  If any of your rules or software has changed, testing is key! 

These are just a handful of tips.  Make sure you plan early and involve all of your key players.  Good luck!

When you have a chance check out this video from SF Park.  It’s about 2½ minutes long and is probably the best (and cutest) parking marketing video I’ve ever seen.  The City of San Francisco has a federal funding grant to experiment with demand-based pricing for metered parking.

My husband jokingly credits himself for my career. He was writing parking citations at the beach as his summer job when we were both in college. I was tired of working part time in restaurants when a bookkeeping position opened in the office.  It turned out that working in parking was a great job to have while also completing my degree. Over the course of the next few years, I worked in customer service, wrote parking citations, booted and towed vehicles, and helped in the parking office.  I worked in three different parking operations which were all managed by the same private company.  Eventually one of those operations switched their software to T2 Flex and I was introduced to T2 Systems. 

Natalie Baird

In 1986 I decided to become a police officer. But never in a million years did I ever think this would lead to parking, I thought it was all “cops and robbers”, you know chasing the bad guys, high speed pursuits, the occasional “help save my cat”. Well over the next few years I made my career advancements and ended up as a Sergeant with the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin, Texas. After being promoted I took over the supervision of the Parking Office in the Capitol Complex which regulated parking for 14,000 State of Texas employees. HOLY GUACAMOLE, was I in for an awakening when I discovered what parking was all about. Never in my 14 prior years in law enforcement did anyone and I mean anyone ever tell me, train me or mention in passing anything about parking! Well that was my first taste of parking, the purchase of T2 software and electronic ticket writers came next and then my arrival as an employee at T2 a few years later!  

 So that is how I came to be in parking, and honestly when I became a police officer I never in a million years ever figured I would end up doing anything in parking, never! 

Stu Glaeser
 

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 

As an MBA graduate student and general parking pass holder, I will provide a couple observations for consideration.

Today I parked in a reserved spot at 4:52PM.

*Strategic Differentiation*

*Professional Ninjas:* The prowess and cunning of the parking officers  is pretty amazing. He or she had time to realize my sticker was not a reserved sticker, but a general sticker; calculate the time he or she had to get the ticket written (in this case less than 8 minutes), pull out the little portable computer of scorn, type my license plate in, print, and plant the ticket with - I'm sure - a sly smirk. As rapidly as this had to have happened, I'm surprised I didn't see, hear, or smell the officer. I couldn't have been more than an inch away from the car.

*Strict adherence to policy:* As a general parking pass allows its bearer to park in a reserved spot after 5PM, your highly trained ninja officers stick to the letter of the law. General pass? 8 minutes before 5pm? Should  I give the ticket? HECK YES!!! Admirable!

*Sound Economic Logic*

 $112.50 per hour potential revenue from one reserved spot: At 15.00 per ticket for an 8 minute infraction, I conservatively calculate your potential revenue for one reserved spot to be $1125 per day. That's nearly a quarter million per year assuming your ninjas work on Christmas; which on second thought, is a no-brainer. I hate to think what your potential revenue would be at a 1 minute or 30 second infraction. As noted above, your people can certainly handle this kind of speed and accuracy.

*Additional thoughts*

*MBA*: My choosing to return to school to pursue an MBA was; lets face it, to make more money. At roughly 60K per year, my research leads me to expect a 25 to 30% salary increase when I finish. Roughly 75 to 80K on the conservative side. My plan is to start my own company when I finish in the technology sector to increase my chances at making a bit more - perhaps 100 to 150K. I hadn't even considered the parking infraction industry, but my experience today tells me the potential revenue is HUGE. Using the above rough estimates, one spot for a two year time investment is nearly 1 Million gross. Forget entrepreneurship. The secret is in 6 X 12 pavement.

*Extrinsic de-motivation*: If the rationale is to generate income for the university to provide better facilities to attract more students, you have certainly illustrated strength in at least two of these. Were I to use your logic however; I would: invite a customer into my store, have him pay an expensive cover fee, make him sweep and clean while patronizing, force him to purchase premium products that I select, make him bring his own shopping cart, charge him for pushing his cart in my store, and have him kicked in the junk by heartless ninjas when he turns to look at what's on sale next week. Then I would smile and tell him to be sure and bring his friends and remember me when he leaves. I might even send him a mailer from time to time with a beautiful scene; a river and green space; perhaps smiling bright faces; some inspirational tag on the front like: "Learning Lives on the River", or, "Remember to Support Your Future." On the back I might include a petition to submit a few extra bucks to help fund more pay-dirt pavement acquisition.

I think I'll stick to entrepreneurship in the ninja-free technology sector.

On many occasions I will hear of the person who hit the accelerator instead of the brake when parking their car. Sometimes, this action takes them into the ice cream aisle of their local grocery store or through the windows of the car dealership. However, I had no idea parking could be this dangerous and death defying:

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