Game Changers

May 22, 2013 By
_EST1799

Another busy day at the IPI Conference & Expo gave attendees a glimpse into the future of parking, an afternoon of business on the _EST1799Expo floor, educational sessions, and plenty of opportunity to network, network, network.

The morning kicked off with the 2013 IPI Awards of Excellence presentation, where outstanding parking facilities and operations were honored and applauded (see more on this in the June issue of The Parking Professional, arriving in your mailbox soon). This year’s awardees included garages that showcase innovative design, out-of-the-box thinking, and sustainable solutions that make sense, along with operations that have overcome tremendous challenges to serve their communities and keep people moving.

The room went silent after that as attendees were held rapt by Mary Smith of Walker Parking Consultants, a top expert on parking and transportation, who talked about “Game Changers.”

“Parking has changed more in the past 10 years than in my previous 28 in the industry,” she said, attributing that to changing trends in car ownership rates, growing cities, and other factors. She pointed out reasons why parking is not, as some believe, the root of urban sprawl issues, and said that while efforts to change the perception of parking through alternate uses can be good, they’re not always executed in the wisest fashion.

_EST1882Downtown garages that lease their spaces out for weddings and other events, she said, are “touted as great shared use, but it’s not appropriate to take spaces out of use for parking when they’re needed most.” Instead, uses such as farm markets during the day (when spaces aren’t in as much demand by restaurants and other businesses, can be a better use.

Smith spent some time talking about “peak cars,” which is a peak in vehicle ownership forecast to happen in the next several years, as millennial generation members (born after 1980) eschew individual car ownership in favor of car share programs and public transportation. She also talked about the next generations of technology for cars, including compressed natural gas (CNG) and driverless cars, including some that may fly.

Following her presentation, attendees enjoyed an afternoon networking and exploring new products, services, and technologies on the Expo hall floor, attending educational sessions in five tracks, and exchanging business cards, handshakes, and conversation in the halls of the convention center.

The IPI Conference & Expo wraps up today with the final Expo hours, a lunchtime presentation by marketing expert Bill Smith, and the closing event that’s sure to be fast-paced and thrilling!

 

Filed Under: IPI Conference & Expo

IPI Conference & Expo Kicks Off

May 21, 2013 By
Kim Fernandez

Record numbers of parking professionals have made the most of their time at the IPI Conference & Expo in Fort Lauderdale, _EST1388
Florida, taking in educational sessions, doing business on the Expo hall floor, and having fun with friends around town.

Day one kicked off Sunday with the first round of education–sessions are organized into five distinct tracks–and the opening event at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Science and Discovery, where attendees mingled among fascinating and fun interactive exhibits. Also popular was the first Poster Session on the third floor of the convention center, where exhibits on parking projects and innovations offered information in a new format–this continues throughout the conference just outside the education session rooms.

Yesterday started with a touching awards ceremony that honored top professionals in the IPI Professional Recognition Program. A highlight was the presentation of the newly-named James M. Hunnicutt, CAPP, Parking Professional of the Year award by two of the late association founder’s daughters to Roamy Valera, CAPP. (see the July issue of The Parking Professional for more–coming soon!).

_EST0991Following awards, speaker Scott Brusaw took the stage to talk about his Solar Roadways project, which has the potential to replace asphalt and concrete on parking lots, sidewalks, and roads with LED-equipped solar panels, generating power for businesses and communities, electric vehicle charging, and variable lighting that can be configured for lines, messages, and even instant warnings that something’s on the surface up ahead (read The Parking Professional’s cover story on Solar Roadways here). Able to melt snow and ice before they have a chance to accumulate on roads or parking lots, Solar Roadways has attracted the attention of government agencies, large companies, and parking professionals.

The concept was clearly popular with attendees, many of whom visited with Brusaw and his wife and co-inventor, Julie, at the Expo, where a piece of solar road sparked a lot of conversation.

More excitement awaits today, with a presentation by Mary Smith, Walker Parking Consultants, about the future of parking, the 2013 IPI Awards of Excellence, education sessions that include IPI’s first IGNITE session–five minutes and 20 slides for each energizing speaker–and more Expo hours and PowerPitch forums on the floor. It’s going to be a great day in Florida!

 

Filed Under: IPI Conference & Expo

Stockings Hung By the Chimney With Care

May 16, 2013 By
Bonnie Watts

Today is a day of excitement and anticipation and nervous energy around the IPI office. It reminds me of the role of parent on Christmas, actually. The months of shopping, the dreaded Black Friday chaos, decorating the house, finding that perfect gift for loved ones, baking and preparing for the family feasts, putting together toys to surprise little ones under the tree, and then hanging the stockings by the chimney with care in eager anticipation. That’s how I feel today. As our Conference planning team reviews the event agenda one more time and we double-check our boarding passes and flight times en route to Fort Lauderdale, I am reminded of all the fabulous surprises in store for our attendees and exhibitors. From power-packed educational content to illuminating keynote speakers, to our condensed CAPP Five-Day certification course, to the jam-packed exhibit hall (literally–we couldn’t find a spot for another exhibitor if we had to), to the first time ever Poster Session gallery, to the fun, interactive, and outside-the-box social events, this year’s IPI Conference & Expo promises that attendees will walk away with memories, education, and new friendships and partnerships that will shape their careers–the gift that keeps on giving.

Our pre-registration numbers are the highest ever and this is likely to be a record-breaking turnout this year with more than 2,500 attendees. I feel like it’s Christmas Eve. Your stocking has been hung by the chimney with care. We can’t wait to see you enjoy everything we have in store.

I’ll see you in Fort Lauderdale with your gifts waiting for you!

P.S. If you haven’t registered, it’s still not too late to join us. We’re expecting record-breaking crowds, but you can register onsite. Visit IPIConference.parking.org for more information.

 

Filed Under: IPI Conference & Expo

ADA Compliance Standards in Higher Education

May 13, 2013 By
Trussell-Mohlerphoto

I feel as if I have spent a lifetime working in higher education, specifically in the parking industry! After almost 14 years, I’ve learned that nothing ever stays the same, and you always have to be on your toes, staying on top of the latest developments. that’s particularly true in the area of ADA compliance. Policy regarding ADA compliance as it relates to parking is constantly being updated, and it’s our responsibility as parking professionals to be aware of these changes and implement those necessary to ensure compliance.

Ohio University is situated on beautiful rolling hills and the campus intermingles with the City of Athens. The campus is very much a walking campus supported by transit provided by the city and the university.  Lack of parking at many buildings requires the use of Campus Area Transit Cutting Across Boundaries (CATCAB), a service for individuals with mobility limitations, by many individuals with disabilities. One area  behind a classroom building was designated as disability parking, as it provided those with disabilities access to this classroom and the library. There are no other parking options in this area, so we felt we were providing the best parking options available given the area and what we had to work with.

Unfortunately, a pedestrian (who was texting and walking) was struck by a vehicle in this area. This led to the removal of the spaces behind the building. A student with a disability permit who parked in this area every day was quite upset about the loss of these spaces and filed a complaint. The investigation grew to encompass every disability space on campus–spaces that were a quarter-inch off had to be re-lined, signs were changed, lots were completely re-lined to meet requirements, etc. One complaint led to a two-year process of ensuring all spaces were acceptable and up to code.

While parking itself has met all requirements, the university is still–four years later–working to make changes to meet requirements demanded by the Office of Civil Rights. How many of you are quickly finding slope issues, space width issues? How many of your newly-painted or constructed lots were painted and signed by a contractor who did not know these regulations and left your disability spaces outside of compliance? I think you will be surprised to find it’s like a poison ivy: once you scratch it, it spreads everywhere!

Filed Under: Compliance, IPI Conference & Expo

Cloud Computing and Parking

May 9, 2013 By
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

One of the great paradigm shifts in technology currently happening today is the use of the cloud. How it will eventually affect the parking industry is an open issue. It is already certain to affect how we store and process data and conduct business going forward. Operators and parking administrators must understand the implications and how best to deal with the cloud.Parking is currently affected by several changes:

  • Municipalities and cities have identified parking as a major source of income.
  • On-and off-street parking converge more and more into one business executed by one and the same party.
  • Road pricing, city tolls, and parking have started to converge.
  • Technology infrastructure and capabilities have changed radically.
  • As a consequence, things that have been tied together or tied to a location can now be executed independent of location or time constraints (e.g. identification or payment).

In this highly competitive, globalized world, the cloud provides those who embrace it with a competitive advantage. Competition usually mandates growth. Cloud technology will continue to grow faster, achieving more geographical coverage with less effort and investmentIn most cases, different parking management systems come from different vendors, to be installed and used at geographically diverse parking lots. Cloud technology is ideally suited to not only retrieve information, but to also control devices or applications remotely, independent of locations or time of day. Centralized cloud control is not only cheaper to implement, but also standardizes the way car parks can be managed, leading to reduced training and operational costs. And most importantly, it allows the automation of repetitive tasks, which leads to reduce cost combined with an increase in process quality.

Car park operators offer new types of services over the internet. Using the internet opens a totally new business domain and a path to new revenue sources. Cloud technology allows car park operators to benefit from direct access to consumers and engage in new business-to-consumer business models.

In addition, adopters can avoid costly upgrades, improve compliance through effective standardization, reduce service and overhead costs, and can improve data security and availability.

 

Filed Under: IPI Conference & Expo, Technology

Smart Cities = Smart Drivers

May 7, 2013 By
eugene_tsyrklevich_photo

Whether you drive in Barcelona, San Francisco, or Sydney, parking your car can be a nightmare!

Every day millions of drivers around the world get stuck in traffic jams and waste precious hours looking for parking. Fortunately, smart technologies such as real-time traffic updates and real-time parking availability are starting to change that.

Combined with a meteoric rise in the number of connected vehicles on the road, new traffic technologies are starting to have a real effect on reducing traffic and congestion along with eliminating unnecessary time wasted driving around looking for parking.

To address the issue of unnecessary pollution and driver stress caused by searching for a parking space, a recent project focused on a real-time space availability service that received data on the number of available spaces from participating parking lots every few minutes. This information was then relayed in real-time to drivers using mobile and car navigation systems.

The project began to become more and more relevant when studied in relation to on-street/surface parking lots: Multi-story parking garages have the required barrier and/or loop infrastructure to calculate the number of available spaces, but surface parking lots and street spaces generally do not have any mechanisms to do the same thing.

Drivers could make intelligent parking decisions and drive to where there was space availability. They could see what their chances of finding a street parking space were based on the day and time of their arrival, even in locations that had no barriers or sensors installed. This also had a positive environmental effect as it reduced congestion, noise pollution, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

In terms of providing the information to end users, the data was integrated into car/mobile apps, which were now able to know final destination and current traffic conditions in real-time. The car/mobile app was able to give various options to the driver. An interesting element to the project was the use of historical payment transaction data to provide forecasts of parking space availability in the future.

The project went live with the City of Seattle and Westminster Council in London in 2012. I look forward to sharing more about it on Sunday, May 19 during the IPI Conference & Expo–hope to see you then!

 

 

Filed Under: IPI Conference & Expo, Technology

Downton Abbey, Downtown Parking

April 29, 2013 By
Jeff Petry

Downton Abbey is the blockbuster PBS television series set 100 years ago in Great Britain that explores the effects of societal, economic, and technological change on the British society through the eyes of the aristocratic Crawley family. The show is rooted in England’s great recession and follows the family drama through the sinking of the Titanic, flu pandemic, World War I, women’s suffrage, and the creation of the Irish free state.

Believe it or not, what fascinates me about Downton Abbey is what I have learned from it about parking:

  • Stewardship. Downton Abbey is a big estate with a lot of moving parts. The Earl wants to preserve the property for his family, employed staff, social hierarchy, and economic ties to the town of Grantham. We in parking are stewards of our public resources, including parking structures, surface lots, public streets, staff, and all the other moving parts. Our parking stewardship is also tied directly to the economics of our local community and our reputation.
  • Technology. In the first season of Downton Abbey, Violet, the Countess of Grantham, says, “First electricity, now telephones. Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an H.G. Wells novel.” We are all comfortable or uncomfortable with various pieces of technology. Technology continues to change our parking interactions, from communicating to processing information to conducting transactions. Customers can pay for an on-street parking space while sitting in a meeting. We can video chat with upset customers in the field. And, pretty soon, our customers will be able to use at home 3-D printers to print their parking tags, vouchers, or other credentials.
  • Diplomacy. The biggest takeaway from Downton Abbey is the diplomacy exercised during utmost turmoil in the characters’ personal lives, business transactions, or world events. This is something parking professionals can perfect. We are always under external stress from customers who are unhappy about tickets, having to pay for parking, or our facilities. We are constantly working to deliver a better parking product while meeting challenges within our organizations.

Downton Abbey is a drama about people moving forward through life. It encompasses the extended Crawley family (our communities) that has hired staff (parking people) to provide the stewardship of the family assets through changing times. To be successful in our jobs, we must continue to maintain utmost diplomacy and preserve our legacy.

 

Filed Under: Management

A Bi-Partisan, Multi-Generational, Earth-Friendly Effort

April 24, 2013 By
paul_wessel

I’m still wishing everyone a happy 43rd Earth Day! It’s a sentiment I think we should try to keep alive beyond a date on the calendar. Bearing in mind philosopher George Santayana’s admonition that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” I did a little Googling on Earth Day’s history.

What I found on Earthday.org was stunning: leaders used to disagree without being disagreeable! Here’s how Earthday.org describes it:

The idea for Earth Day came to founder Gaylord Nelson (then a U.S. senator from Wisconsin), after witnessing the ravages of the massive 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, environmental protection would be forced onto the national political agenda. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a “national teach-in on the environment” to the media, persuaded conservation-minded Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to serve as his co-chair, and recruited Denis Hayes as national coordinator. Hayes then built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the land.

As a result 20 million Americans took to streets, parks, and auditoriums in massive rallies across the country on April 22, 1970, to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable world. Thousands of college and university students organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that fought against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts. “It was a gamble,” Gaylord recalled, “but it worked.”

Two television broadcasts from that time capture both the passion and diversity of the emerging movement as well as the civility with which we used to disagree:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/67649

http://www.hulu.com/watch/67637

I’m glad to be part of a group of people in the parking, auto, real estate and technology industries keeping the optimism of 43 years ago alive today. Keep your eyes open for a wonderful spring blossoming from the Green Parking Council:  Check out an advance copy of our Green Garage Certification Public Beta (alternate site for easier downloading and printing) and join us in keeping the spirit of Earth Day alive 365 days a year.

 

Filed Under: Sustainability

Musings on Earth Day, Generational Change, and Radical Shifts

April 22, 2013 By
Rachael Yoka

Fun fact: Did you know there is actually an Earth Day anthem? I didn’t either, until I started thinking about this blog post. Apparently, itphoto is set to Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Just like Mother’s Day, once a year we pull out all the stops to let Mom know how much we love her, which–in my opinion–misses the mark by 364 days. Similarly, we pull out and dust off the concept of Earth Day once a year, and concerned folks plan events and take to the streets in different ways to get the message of sustainability out to a broader audience.

I am a marketing person at heart, and nothing speaks to me more clearly than a well-executed campaign to brand a concept and increase public knowledge and awareness. So I agree that the message and intent of Earth Day is critically important (not just to us but more to our kids, and their kids). That message is getting through, and it’s ringing true for the youngest of generations.

My children are very concerned about sustainability–about recycling and pollution and baby animals everywhere (see accompanying art, copyright Sofia, age 9).The message will grow wider and deeper with each successive generation, and that is a very good thing.

But there is certainly recognition that we can’t wait for my 9-year-old to effect. We understand many of the challenges we face, and we can make changes to positively affect outcomes now.

The parking industry’s reaction to sustainability (until fairly recently) has been a reactive or responsive one. However, change is coming, and fast.

Committed leadership and dedicated volunteers are shifting our approach to a proactive one.  The International Parking Institute formally adopted its Sustainability Framework at the 2012 IPI Conference & Expo, and this year, opportunities abound to get engaged in Fort Lauderdale.

The Green Parking Council will release the Certified Green Garage Program for public comment today. IPI and the National Parking Association (NPA) are nearly finished a groundbreaking publication on parking and sustainability due out this summer. Each of these positive and meaningful leaps forward can propel us to a more radical position–one in which the parking and transportation industry helps lead the sustainability movement well into the future.

That vision and leadership is going to take 365 days a year.

 

Filed Under: Sustainability

The Smartest People in the Room

April 19, 2013 By
Wanda Brown

In my recent opportunity to discuss the IPI association with Fox 40 News in Sacramento (see it here), the host asked, “Why did you choose parking as a career?” I could tell she did not have a clue about what we do, and without thinking, I immediately responded, “Because everything I’ve ever wanted to do in my career, I found in this profession.” It was true!

Some may think our profession is only about parking cars. I wanted to present her with a list of the experts we have in our membership who are CAPP graduates, many with master’s degrees, some with Ph.D’s, working in finance, management, engineering, urban planning, consulting, information systems, and architecture. She didn’t know about the massive layers of expertise required to operate in such a complex industry that not only manages public behavior, but is a direct link to essential services that are necessary for life.

We must understand local, state, and federal laws and how they apply to the people we serve and work for. We must also understand facility design, construction, and maintenance; sustainability; human resources; public relations; technology; finance and budgeting; and the list goes on and on. Maintaining compliance across a myriad of professional disciplines can only be achieved through an industry of well-prepared and disciplined professionals who operate ethically and efficiently. Our industry truly makes the world work, as these interconnected services produce the fiscal vibrance we all appreciate.

So, it is no wonder that Parking Matters® is a critical outreach. What other industry has professionals who are required to know so much? I think we are the smartest people in the room. We may be missing from some rooms, but the world is learning we are here and moving this profession forward.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Perception of Parking
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