About Isaiah Mouw, CAPP

Isaiah Mouw, CAPP, LEED Green Associate, is a general manager for Republic Parking System. He serves on the IPI Advisory Council, Sustainability Committee, and Parking Matters® Committee.

Being Human

March 5, 2013 By
Isaiah Mouw

Spend enough time in parking operations and you’re guaranteed to need to respond to a complaint. One way to grow from a good operation to a great one is re-thinking the way you do that. If your typical response is, “We apologize for any inconvenience,” you may be doing a bad job handling the situation, says author and business leader Daniel Pink. In an article from The Telegraph, Pink challenges us to “only speak like a human at work.”

We’ve all received emails that said, “We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you.” But is this how you respond when you are truly sorry? Can you imagine telling your spouse, “I apologize for any inconvenience this may have brought on you?” Jason Fried, author of ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever, tells of a day he saw a woman spill coffee on a stranger in a Chicago café. The spiller’s response was, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” That, Fried says, is how we react when we’re really sorry.

“When you say, ‘I’m sorry,’ you’re owning,” he explains. “When you say ‘I apologize,’ you’re renting.”

A research study performed by behavioral economist Dan Ariely showed that when customers are treated rudely, they are more likely to act vengefully. For example, they may not tell the parking cashier the truth when they are given too much change. When customers are treated kindly (like human beings), they are more inclined to behave honorably.

Don’t go replying to complaints with, “My bad, dude,” but try letting your customers know you own the problem by speaking more like a human–by saying, “I’m sorry.” Parking automation and robotics are quickly taking over many facets of the parking industry. Do we really need them taking over our speech?

(If you feel like reading this blog post was a waste of your valuable time, I apologize for the inconvenience this might have caused you.)

 

 

Filed Under: Customer Service, Parking Operations

Piloted Parking

February 22, 2013 By
Isaiah Mouw

An estimated 10 million vehicle accidents occur each year and many of them take place while parking. Audi thinks they’ve found a solution with their piloted parking system. Similar to the Google driverless car, the Audi parking system will rely on ultrasound or cameras affixed to the vehicle to locate empty parking spaces within a garage or parking lot and conveniently park itself without a driver. You have to watch this video to truly appreciate it. It can even parallel park.

Benefits to the driver include saving time, fewer accidents, and not having the Seinfeld moment of losing one’s vehicle in a garage, as the vehicle will return to the driver with a simple tap of a button on one’s smartphone. In the not so distant future, anxious teenagers will no longer have to worry about parallel parking in front of an intimidating driver instructor; they’ll just have to know how to operate their phone. Questions from parking professionals are numerous, from how this will work in a controlled environment, how to stop it from parking in reserved spaces, protocols for an accident, and what happens in the always-humorous “standoff” situations.

Many argue that the freedom and fun in being able to step on the gas pedal and speed down a highway outweighs any benefits of a driverless car, but few would be against avoiding the drive through a busy garage to locate a parking space. One thing is for sure: technology like this will more than likely dominate the roads in the next decade, making me think how this will affect our industry, specifically valet and parking access and revenue control systems.

Filed Under: Parking Automation, Technology, Valet

BO-GOA

November 14, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

In an article featured in The Telegraph, business guru Daniel Pink discusses the Buy One, Give One Away (BO-GOA) model made famous by TOMS shoes.  TOMS promise is simple: “With every pair you purchase TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One.”

BO-GOA , explains the article, “‘is a model where the consumer can continue to reap satisfaction as the shoe gets worn. Most other consumption causes a decrease in satisfaction, as products become obsolete and head towards landfill.’ As a result, the giveaways, though costly, increase customer satisfaction and deepen loyalty.” TOMS isn’t the only company to have successfully implemented a BO-GOA model: Warby Parker donates a pair of glasses for every pair sold, and Happy Blankie gives away a blanket to a needy child with every bedcover sold.

While giving a parking space to someone in need for every parking space purchased doesn’t seem practical, parking companies can implement goodwill practices that create customer satisfaction. For example, in April 2012, the Parking Authority of River City (PARC) spearheaded free parking for a special event in exchange for donations of non-perishable food or toiletry items. The donations were to be distributed to needy individuals and families. The results were astonishing. Hundreds of people donated items in exchange for free parking.

It seems to be popular consensus that no one enjoys paying for parking. But in Louisville, people paid for parking with donations that probably cost more than the usual parking charge because they knew they were helping someone in need. I bet the next time one of those customers has to choose between a PARC facility and a competitor, they’ll choose the PARC facility because they’ll remember their feel-good experience there. Similar to a BO-GOA model, this situation allows the customer to reap the satisfaction weeks after the parking transaction.

With immediate marketing benefits through free social media marketing, goodwill examples like these will help your organization set itself apart from the competitors while also helping someone in need.

 

Filed Under: Community Involvement, Customer Service

Solar Roadways and Parking Lots

October 23, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

I recently stumbled across this video about Solar Roadways. The concept involves turning roadways and parking lots into solar panel road surfaces that generate electricity. Inventor and co-founder of the Solar Roadways project Scott Brushaw explains, “There are 25,000 square miles of road surfaces, parking lots and driveways in the lower 48 states. If we covered that with solar panels with just 15 percent efficiency, we’d produce three times more electricity than this country uses on an annual basis and that’s almost enough to power the entire world. Roads are collecting heat anyway; this thing collects the power and stores it.”

One concern was creating glass strong enough to support the heaviest loads under the most extreme conditions, but they believe they’ve created a weatherproof, high-strength surface that’s up to the task. But the biggest concern is, of course, cost. One of these solar panels (12’x12’) can cost up to $7,000, and the plans to cover the roadways would call for billions of these panels. Do the math.

The Solar Roadway project recently received a $750,000.00 grant to build the first solar surface parking lot. With an estimated industry average cost of $4,000.00 per space to construct a parking lot, this $750,000 is not as large as it first seems. These solar panels consist of embedded LEDs that can be used to create crosswalks or traffic warnings. They could also be used to mark parking spaces. Imagine being able to change your layout design any day of the week, depending on your demand. These panels will also have the capability to charge electric vehicles while parked. The system will warm itself during the winter to melt away any snow or ice. The Solar Roadways team should have the parking lot completed in November and will be presenting the results shortly after.

This is not just a sustainability issue. Yes, it is very sustainable as the renewable energy from the proposed Solar Roadways project would literally cut greenhouse gases in half. But it may also make economic sense sometime in the future. The cost of petroleum-based asphalt continues to rise, while solar power has been falling at a rate of 7 percent per year for the last 30 years.  As technology improves each year, the cost of solar technologies should continue to drop. Solar panel surface parking lots could pay for themselves quickly as they generate renewable energy in the future.

To me, solar road surfaces is an important aspect  of the future of parking. Not this decade or even the next, but down the road, I think we will all be parking on solar surfaces.

 

Filed Under: Electric Vehicles, Solar Panels, Sustainability, Technology

Parking Efficiency, but at What Cost?

September 18, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

This fall, Starbucks will accept payments through a mobile app developed by a company named Square. Customers will be able to pay by holding up their phones and allowing Starbucks employees to automatically charge the customers’ cards.

We are already seeing apps like this in the parking industry through pay-by-phone parking vendors. But Starbucks is taking it a step further–soon, their customers will not even need to take their phones or wallets out of their pockets. The Square mobile app will use the phone’s GPS system to detect that a customer walked in and will automatically connect the customer to the store’s computerized checkout software. Square CEO Jack Dorsey explains, “You can actually walk into a merchant, keep your phone in pocket, keep your wallet in your pocket, and a picture of you pops up on the register. … You can just say, ‘I’m Laurie, and I’d like a cappuccino,” and your card is charged in the background.”[1]

Having visited nearly every booth at the IPI Conference & Expo, I don’t doubt parking vendors are exploring payment methods through companies such as Square as I type this entry; we are already very close thanks to the use of technologies such as near field communications (NFC) and quick response (QR) codes. Imagine driving into a gated parking garage, running an errand, and driving out without stopping. Entering the garage in your vehicle activates the mobile GPS parking timer, and exiting the garage stops the mobile GPS timer that charges your account. No stopping. No vehicle idling. No cash handling. No cashiering. No pay-on-foot machine. Nothing.

Some people would love this. As an introvert, sometimes it is difficult for me to carry on a conversation with the gas attendant about the weather or the recent rise in gasoline costs. On the other hand, I often find myself wanting to take a Louisville Slugger to the automated fuel dispenser, after playing 20 questions with the screen: “Would you like a car wash today?” “Would you like to use your debit card to save $0.03 per gallon?” “Are you a loyalty member?”

I go to Starbucks nearly every day. The employees know I like an extra shot of mocha, and they know I’m allergic to wheat. They know the names of my wife and children. They even got me a birthday card on my actual birthday.

I’m not advocating for or against automated cashiering–there are many benefits to both. I just want to challenge you take a look at your customer base and see what it is they want. Are they business men and women in a hurry to get to work and get home, or are they grieving hospital guests looking for comfort and a smile from a friendly cashier? Or can both systems be implemented blending automated cashiering with an employee present during peak periods? Technology has done miracles for the parking industry and saved our owners and clients millions of dollars in captured revenue. Just make sure that as a parking and transportation professional, you are doing your homework and managing the technology efficiently, before a machine takes over the operation and the human connection gets lost in techno space.

 

Filed Under: Parking Automation, Technology

Carmageddon and Why Parking Matters

July 30, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

Around this time last year, the Kentucky Speedway held its inaugural Sprint Cup Series event resulting in one of the worst traffic catastrophes in sporting history. An estimated 20,000 people missed the inaugural Quaker State 400 because of what some said was poor parking and transportation planning. Fortunately, the speedway was given a second chance at redemption earlier this month as it hosted the Quaker State 400 once again.

Donna McMillen, area manager for Riverside Parking, Louisville, attended the race both years. Knowing the area and potential for traffic issues, she arrived nearly 10 hours early for the 2011 race.  In hindsight, this proved a wise decision: she was able to avoid the parking and traffic disaster that interfered with so many other drivers, including half of her expected party.

I live in Kentucky and followed with interest to see if Kentucky Speedway would redeem itself this year.  Happily, it did. Collaborating with parking vendors, speedway officials, the state police, the Transportation Cabinet, and the governor’s office, the speedway spent more than $11 million on transportation upgrades, including adding 33,000 parking spaces. This year, McMillen arrived only one hour before the show and was able to drive right in with no issues. “This year, there were people visible directing traffic and pointing people to available parking areas. You didn’t see that last year,” she says. Parking played an important and central role in the planning process this year.

For the past two years the International Parking Institute (IPI) has been waving its Parking Matters® banner high. To the 20,000 people who missed the race last year, parking mattered. To Kentucky Speedway managers and owners who had to answer to the fans for last year’s parking and traffic fiasco, parking mattered. Time and time again, parking professionals are left out of the planning process with often devastating results. I was delighted to see that parking and transportation took a priority this year and to see the State of Kentucky redeem itself, because Parking Matters®.

Filed Under: Event Parking, Traffic

Shared Spaces

July 10, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

A recent flight offered me the time to read ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph, Ph.D.  (The Parking Professional cover story, May 2012. [PDF]) One concept that caught my attention was that of shared space designs for streets and parking lots.

Shared space involves the redesign of streets/land areas to blur distinctions between drivers and other users by removing clear-cut rules, signage, and traffic lights that should prompt caution, low speeds, and a negotiated approach to the right-of-way. In other words, removing the typical safety boundaries in a street or parking area creates an intentional unsafe environment. Creating an unsafe and unfamiliar environment causes drivers and users to be extra cautious.

Sound ridiculous?

Shared spaces has been widely used over the past 20 years in cities such as Delft, Netherlands; Bohmte, Germany; and Brighton City, U.K. Designers of a shared space plan in the Delft state, “Separating traffic flows blinkers people and causes an increase in speed. Because everyone has their one lane, people take less account of other road users.”[1]

This is an example of why more pedestrians are killed crossing the street at marked crosswalks than unmarked crosswalks. Pedestrians compensate for the “safe” environment of a marked crossing by being less cautious about the oncoming traffic.  The book, Target Risk, by Gerald J.S. Wilde discusses Sweden’s efforts to change from driving on the left-hand side of the road to driving on the right. People compensated for the new traffic changes by driving more carefully. During the next year, traffic fatalities dropped 17 percent, before eventually returning gradually to their previous levels.

Of course, a concept as radical as this does not come without its complaints. Coventry City, U.K., recently implemented several shared space designs in several of its town junctions in part of redevelopment plan for the upcoming Olympic Games. Many city residents are not happy with this plan, leading to a petition with more than 700 town signatures to put an end to such designs, as well as a Facebook page entitled “End Coventry’s ‘Shared Spaces’ Experiment.”

I am not advocating parking professionals take down all their parking and traffic flow signage and open up their parking lots to be used as public free-for-alls, but this concept is definitely worth looking into in more detail.

Filed Under: Surface Lots, Technology

Preventing Garage Suicides

June 7, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

Cindy Campbell recently wrote an excellent blog post about being trained for the unexpected after a suicide took place in one of her parking facilities. In the past few weeks, there have been several examples in the news of people threatening to commit suicide by jumping out of parking garages. Thankfully in both cases, the police and authorities were trained for the unexpected.

Andy Troth (CAPP) and I wrote an article [PDF] about suicide for The Parking Professional a few years ago after dealing with suicide jumpers at our own parking facilities. The article outlines why suicide from jumping happens, where suicide from jumping most commonly occurs, how parking professionals should handle this tragic event should it occur in their garage, and how to help prevent suicide from happening. We reached out to some suicide experts, including Lanny Berman, Ph.D., ABPP, executive director with the American Association of Suicidology. What we found is that parking garages are prone to suicide attempts because they provide easy access to great heights, and jumping from great heights offers a high certainty of death. Suicide by jumping from a parking garage affects all market segments especially universities, hospitals and municipalities, so shouldn’t we be prepared?

To learn more on how to handle this situation should it occur in your facility, check out the article or visit IPI’s webinar on the subject.

Filed Under: Safety, Security

All Is Vanity … Plates

March 30, 2012 By
Isaiah Mouw

A Yahoo article recently told the story of Danny White of Washington, D.C., who purchased a vanity plate that simply said, ‘NO TAGS’. What’s the problem with this? Enforcement officers write “no tags” when issuing a parking ticket for a vehicle with no license plate. As a result, White has racked up a total of more than $20,000 worth of parking tickets, none of which belong to him.

Washington, D.C. driver Danny White thought he had a really good idea for a joke. But the joke’s on him–to the tune of $20,000, reports local affiliate NBC4.

White’s prank started 25 years ago when he got a vanity license plate reading, “NO TAGS.” He told NBC4 that he was ”Just having fun!” and that ”D.C. don’t get the joke. They don’t get it.”

The article also mentions Nick Vautier of Los Angeles, Calif., who bought a vanity plate with his initials. Enforcement officers there often use “NV” when writing a citation for a plate-less vehicle. Vautier eventually changed his plate after scores of unpaid ticket notices flooded his mailbox.

Early in my parking career, I used the plate “ABC123″ when training officers to write parking tickets. There was a woman in a nearby town who kept receiving notices for unpaid tickets even though she rarely came to our city; her tags were, of course, ABC123. Being a teacher, she would not part ways with that plate.

Some cities now scan bar codes from state inspection stickers when issuing parking tickets. The scan records bar code data including plate type and VIN. This eliminates much of the confusion from vanity plates or the growing number of specialty plates that use the same number system as unadorned tags, but depend on the officer to differentiate by noting a college logo or other plate design.

Whatever the resolution is, I’d have to agree with a comment on the website: “It’s 2012. This should be something that technology should be easily able to fix.” The other I like is this: “My next car will have the plate ‘I FORGOT’. That way, if I get in a hit and run accident and the cops ask the guy I hit what the license plate was of my car…”

Filed Under: Lighter Side of Parking, On-Street Parking, Parking Enforcement, Tickets