By Eric Haggett, LEED Green Associate and Maria Irshad, CAPP, MPA
SHOULDER PADS, NEON , leg warmers, acid wash, big hair, mom jeans need I say more?
As a proud member of Generation X, I am a survivor of some of the scariest trends in human history. The 1980s were ripe with trends that (thankfully) came and went. Trends are funny things—some stick and some don’t, but either way, ignoring them would be a mistake.
The definition of trends is a general direction in which something is developing or changing, or to change or develop in a general direction. This issue of Parking & Mobility looks at just that—the direction that the parking, transportation, and mobility industry is going.
While technology and ease of interaction are no neon legwarmers, they are clearly the trends to watch.
This issue brings you critical articles from two IPMI committees: the Technology Committee and the Smart Transportation Task Force. Both features deliver excellent content on trends: one focused on data and its impact on revenue, and the other on the impacts of smart transportation on people-centered approaches to parking and mobility. In addition, we hear about trends in parking as a catalyst for communities and the innovative outcomes of implementing digital parking for municipalities.
We also examine parking and mobility technology trends through the eyes of a funding and M&A expert, who gives us the point of view of an investor and advisor, critical considering the recent influx of outside money into our world.
This exceptional content, coupled with the great learning found in our monthly standing columns, will give you a snapshot of what to expect from the next chapter of parking, transportation, and mobility.
What does the future hold? Hopefully, nothing neon or with shoulder pads.
Melissa Rysak, editor rysak@parking-mobility.org
PUBLISHER
Shawn Conrad, CAE s.conrad@parking-mobility.org
EDITOR
Melissa Rysak, CPSM rysak@parking-mobility.org
TECHNICAL EDITOR
Rachel Yoka, CAPP, LEED AP BD+C yoka@parking-mobility.org
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A Passion for Technology A Journey Through Time in the Parking & Mobility Industry
By Carmen Donnell, CAPP
MY PASSION FOR TECHNOLOGY began at a very young age. I vividly remember being 12 years old, chatting on the phone after dinner with a friend. I was using an old rotary phone in my parents’ room, dreaming about how cool it would be if we could see a video stream of each other while talking. Streaming wasn’t a concept back then, so we didn’t use that term. In fact, we couldn’t even conceptualize how this fantastical idea might become reality because it felt so crazy, and instead, we laughed and said, “Yeah, right, when cars fly.”
While flying cars aren’t a part of our lives yet, video calls on our phones and computers have been accessible mainstream, for many years now, making our once far-fetched dream a reality.
In 2008, I transitioned from a background in healthcare administration to the parking, mobility, and transportation industry. From a technology standpoint, it felt like stepping back in time. Operations needed to advance and change, but the technology, or lack thereof, was dragging the industry down. Available technology at the time wasn’t at all ‘high tech’ and was frequently far from reliable. The industry’s needs and goals were outpacing the available solutions in the marketplace.
Fast forward to the present, and the situation has dramatically changed. Technology is now advancing so quickly that policy and governance within our operations are struggling to keep up. The industry, once held back by outdated technology, is now accused of slowing the speed of technological growth. What caused this transformation?
I pose a few suggestions:
● Was it forward-thinking municipal organizations like the Calgary Parking Authority and the Pittsburgh Parking Authority who took bold steps to operate License Enabled Parking operations, paving the way for others to be as bold?
● Was the ‘secret’ of our multi-billion-dollar industry finally reaching global investors, attracting significant sums of money and attention?
• Powerful, Responsive Design
• Manage Parking Operations from Any Device
• No Apps Needed
• Portfolio Management
• Quick-Scan Onboarding
• Seamless Updates
• Auto-Scale for Optimal Performance
• 24-Hour AWS Monitoring
● Was it that older, antiquated ways of thinking were finally being challenged, and new, creative ideas were given a chance? And was that because we have become more tolerant of taking risks and learning from potential failures, rather than shying away from them?
Whether it was one of these factors or a combination of them, those of us who have been in the industry for a decade or longer have witnessed a huge transformation. To ensure the pathway is clear for this technology boom to continue and to support better alignment between our operations and the available technology, we need to adopt a proactive and open-minded approach. We must be receptive to all ideas, allocate time and resources to pilot new solutions that have the potential to solve problems, set realistic goals for incremental wins using technology, and foster an organizational mindset that embraces failure as a
learning opportunity. By doing so, we can continue to drive innovation and enhance our operations and the industry forward.
As a member of the IPMI Board of Directors, my hope is that regardless of whether you are a 30year industry veteran or reading Parking & Mobility magazine for the very first time, you are excited by the journey technology is taking us on. As you finish this year and look forward to 2025, I encourage you to get involved at any opportunity to support this ongoing movement. Together, we can continue advancing our industry, solving problems, and enhancing our operations using technology. ◆
CARMEN DONNELL, CAPP , is the Managing Director of PayByPhone Technologies and a member of IPMI’s Board of Directors. She can be reached at cdonnell@paybyphone.com
Progressive Parking A Digital Charge Forward
By Jacob Larson
IN OMAHA, NE , the parking landscape had been characterized by using single-space meters alongside a white-labeled app for many years. This setup governed on-street parking, where rates were established based on the time displayed on the meters. The parking duration varied, allowing for stays ranging from one to ten hours. Once the allotted time expired, vehicles had to be relocated to avoid penalties. For example, if a driver paid for a three-hour stay at a rate of $1.25 per hour, the vehicle was required to move to a new space once the three hours had passed.
By the summer and fall of 2023, Omaha’s parking environment had undergone significant changes. Parkers now have the option to pay for on-street parking from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for a full day. The updated rates follow a progressive structure, varying by parking Tier. In the 2+ Tier, the first two hours are priced at $1 per hour, increasing per hour for any additional time, up to a maximum daily rate of $29. The 3+ Tier offers the first three hours at $1 per hour, with each additional hour progressively increasing. The Economy/Event (E) Tier is priced at $0.50 per hour for a regular session, but the rate increases to $5 during special events.
Technology
With advancements in Generative AI and technology, publishing and updating your parking requirements online is crucial to serve as a reliable source of truth. When users search for parking information in Omaha on Google, the new AI overview offers valuable details on progressive parking rates directly from the official website. Keeping this information accurate and up to date helps users find the most current data and ensures a smoother and more transparent parking experience, reducing confusion and enhancing customer satisfaction.
The introduction of various payment methods, such as mobile apps, contactless payments, and multi-space meters, further improves the parking experience. These options provide greater flexibility and convenience, catering to different user preferences and
streamlining the parking process. The availability of advanced parking apps, offering features like real-time availability and notifications, also contributes to this enhanced user experience. By leveraging these technologies, cities can improve compliance with parking regulations and achieve higher overall satisfaction.
Have Progressive Rates Worked?
Comparing white-label mobile payment data from June 2022 to June 2024 provided insight into how progressive rates were working. In June 2022, mobile payment transactions totaled 84,425. In June 2024, the total transactions reached 129,188 with the new zones and rates - an increase of around 1.53% during a historically busy month for on-street parking. The average parking duration in 2022 was around 2.8 hours for on-street parking. In 2024, with a higher transaction rate, the average parking duration dropped to around 2.2 hours per stay. Overall, this also led to a higher total revenue in June.
So, have the progressive rates really worked? By comparing one of the busiest months, I would say yes.
● Revenue: Increased significantly in June 2024
● Transaction Volume: Increased in June 2024
● Turnover Rate: Shorter parking durations in June 2024
● Compliance Rate: Lower number of written citations in June 2024
Looking Ahead
Ongoing improvements will be implemented as further analysis of the system is conducted. Leveraging common programming languages and databases, new technologies like AI will be instrumental in identifying trends and patterns within extensive datasets. AI will enable the creation of individual data scorecards to assess and enhance data quality, ensuring accuracy and relevance. Additionally, forecasting will have a crucial role in optimizing system performance and facilitating real-time decision-making. By predicting future trends and potential issues, AI-driven forecasting tools will allow for proactive adjustments, making the system more adaptive and efficient in managing data and supporting strategic decisions. ◆
JACOB LARSON is an Applications Analyst for the City of Omaha, Parking and Mobility Division (Park Omaha) and a member of IPMI’s Technology Committee. He can be reached at jacob.larson@cityofomaha.org
Leading Yourself First
Self-Leadership is Critical to Your Success
By Brian M. Favela, MBA
IAM A PRODUCT OF GREAT AND POOR LEADERSHIP. Over my 20 years in the parking and transportation industry, I have realized leaders have a common thread where they grow: my ability to self-lead was critical to my career’s success. People are where they are in their careers because they either say yes or no to an opportunity. I realized self-leadership was the best path forward for my career to be ready for opportunities.
Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing one’s own thinking, behavior, and emotions to achieve one’s objectives. In its simplest form, it is a critical skill underpinning personal and professional success. Traditional leadership involves guiding others. Self-leadership is about taking ownership of your career and your life to steer it in the desired direction.
For me, there are three main components to selfleadership: self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation. Self-awareness is the foundation of self-leadership. It involves understanding your strengths, weaknesses, values, and purpose by gaining insight into what drives you and what holds you back. Self-awareness requires continuous reflection and a willingness to seek feedback from others. It allows you to make more informed decisions and set realistic goals. It is about being honest with yourself and recognizing areas for growth.
Self-regulation is the ability to manage your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in various situations. It encompasses self-discipline, emotional intelligence, and the ability to delay gratification. Self-regulation enables you to stay focused on your goals despite distractions or setbacks. It is about maintaining control over your impulses to stay calm under pressure. This skill is particularly important in facing challenges and uncertainties, allowing you to respond thoughtfully rather than impulsively.
Self-motivation is the driving force that propels you towards your goals. It is centered around an intrinsic desire to achieve and maintain momentum even when external rewards are absent. It involves setting meaningful goals, developing a positive mindset, and fostering resilience. It is about finding personal significance in your endeavors and staying
committed to them despite obstacles. By aligning your actions with your core values and passions, you can sustain your motivation over the long term.
Adopting specific strategies and habits is important for practicing self-leadership effectively. Setting clear, achievable goals is a crucial first step. Break down larger objectives into smaller, manageable tasks and establish a timeline for completing them. Moreover, self-leadership involves seeking out resources and support. Surround yourself with positive influences, whether through mentors, peer groups, or inspirational content. Learning from others and leveraging their experiences can provide valuable insights and encouragement.
While I still have much to learn and room to grow, I understand that self-leadership is a transformative skill that empowers individuals to take control of their lives and achieve their aspirations. By cultivating self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation and adopting effective strategies, you can navigate the complexities within the parking and transportation industry with confidence and purpose.
In our ever-changing world, the ability to lead oneself, specifically in this industry, is not just advantageous—it is essential for personal and professional fulfillment. The team you lead deserves the best of you, and understanding the power of self-leadership can unlock your full potential to achieve success.
BRIAN M. FAVELA, MBA , is Director of Parking and Transportation Services at the
University of South Carolina. He can be reached at bfavela@mailbox.sc.edu
Downtown Mobility Center
THE MEMPHIS DOWNTOWN
MOBILITY CENTER is more than just a parking garage—it’s a transformative addition to the city’s core, strategically designed to enhance the urban experience. Located at the busy intersection of Main Street and Beale Street, the 350,000-squarefoot Center offers 960 parking spaces, serving both local businesses and the city’s thriving entertainment district. Its proximity to landmarks such as The Orpheum Theatre, Beale Street, AutoZone’s headquarters, and FedEx Forum makes it a pivotal asset for the community.
FIRM NAME: LRK
PROJECT LOCATION: Memphis, TN
PROJECT OWNER: Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC)
KEY STAFF:
• Scott Van Der Jagt, AIA— LRK Principal in Charge
• Parking and Wayfinding Consultant: THA Consulting Inc.
• Lighting Consultant: CM Kling
• AV/Security: WJHW
• Life Safety: Code Solutions Group
• Specification Consultant: lo.specs LLC
• Contractors: Flintco and Precise
• Interior Designer(s): LRK
Van Der Jagt Weeks
Olsen Sanchez
“The Downtown Memphis Mobility Center is a key asset that improves accessibility for those living, working, and visiting the downtown core, including the iconic Beale Street entertainment district. The facility provides parking, bike storage, and electric vehicle charging stations, enhancing convenience and supporting a more sustainable, connected downtown experience. Whether you’re a daily commuter or a tourist exploring the area, the Mobility Center ensures easy access to all.”
Developed by the Downtown Memphis Commission after years of planning, the Mobility Center goes beyond the traditional scope of parking infrastructure. The facility, built on an existing parking lot, integrates physically and visually into the urban landscape, with a commitment to enhancing the surrounding environment. The facility’s façade features 2,300 square feet of art from 16 Memphis artists, turning the structure into an artistic highlight in the community rather than just a plain building. This art-centric approach has transformed the Mobility Center into a destination, with stunning views of downtown Memphis from its seven-story height and exterior staircase, which has already been used for fitness and firefighter training.
Beyond its parking function, the Mobility Center embraces a mixed-use anchor concept. The 10,000 square feet of retail space will bring new energy into the area, providing space for local businesses to thrive and further cementing the Center as a vibrant hub. Additionally, a first-of-its-kind bike membership club will offer access to 100 bike racks, free pumps, tool access, and a future build-out that will include showers, lockers, and other amenities. This focus on multimodal transportation highlights the Center’s forward-thinking approach to urban mobility, accommodating both vehicles and bicycles in a seamless and community-friendly manner.
One of the Mobility Center’s standout features is its connectivity. A skybridge links the structure directly to the AutoZone
—Downtown Memphis Commission
headquarters, offering employees easy access directly from the parking facility to their office building while supporting the broader economic growth of the downtown area. Its central location also facilitates pedestrian flow between Beale Street and the riverfront, as well as connecting to Main Street and the recently revitalized Renasant Convention Center.
The Mobility Center is a crucial piece of Memphis’ urban development strategy and downtown growth. Its impact extends beyond parking, contributing to the expansion of the downtown office, corporate, and residential sectors. The facility is expected to facilitate new opportunities for nearby developments, including additional office spaces and residential projects.
As part of Memphis’ broader growth narrative, the Downtown Mobility Center is an example of how parking infrastructure can be reimagined as a community asset. It not only provides critical parking solutions, but also serves as a catalyst for the city’s ongoing transformation, blending art, mobility, and urban vibrancy into one of Memphis’ most exciting new developments. ◆
Improving Employee Experience
When “Operations” Get in
the
Way of Operations
By Tommy Lefkowitz, CPTM
THE PARKING BUSINESS CAN FEEL LIKE A STRESSFUL GRIND , especially when your role includes managing a guest, customer, or client-facing team. If your once-great team is underperforming and you pick up the slack, it can quickly put you in the weeds. If you find yourself putting out customer service fires lit by unhappy employees, you can find yourself in a predicament.
Should your solution be to fire people or watch them quit, you will invariably run short-staffed until you can find and train their replacements. In the meantime, you are burning out as your team’s standards drop, they start to call in sick, and business slowly evaporates. Does this feel familiar?
This tense situation is, sadly, how many managers define operations for themselves. It is the status quo. Customer service results, and by extension metric results, are below par. Still, they feel too busy to fix the problems that lead to those results, especially complex ones like a chronically stressed-out team or a toxic culture. In some cases, they do not seem to understand that there is a direct link between the two, which further precludes a more holistic and forward-looking view of operations. Their remedy is to catch people doing things wrong and correct behaviors, which only exacerbates the issue. Someone once quipped, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” As a leader, it is time to look inward and ask yourself why this is your normal. The absence of employee engagement and healthy culture are, more times than not, the answer to that question. So, why doesn’t everyone prioritize them?
The main reason seems to be that managers are under pressure to produce results, which can make them short-sighted. They focus exclusively on lagging indicators and metrics such as profits or labor costs. Employee engagement and workplace culture are viewed as subjective or nebulous concepts that are difficult to measure, so they are frequently neglected or ignored entirely. Tunnel vision is also common. One can become so laser-focused on the immediate needs of the business that one loses sight of the big picture. What gets lost is creating an environment that is conducive to success in the first place. Subjective as it may appear to some, the leading indicators that
matter most are employee engagement and workplace culture. What are engagement and culture, and how do they impact operations? Engagement is an employee’s positive emotional connection with their peers, their job, their boss, and ultimately the company (countless experts cite a bad relationship with a boss as the number one reason for leaving a job). When a team is engaged, it leads to increased productivity, loyalty, and, notably, customer satisfaction. When you take exceptionally good care of your team, they take exceptionally good care of your customers.
Culture simply refers to what is normal. For example, is it normal to have leaders who care deeply about the individual’s success? Is it normal for team members to feel fulfilled by what they do? Is it normal to have ongoing professional development? Conversely, is it normal that accomplishments go unnoticed? Are there rules for some people that are different than others? Does the team dread coming to another boring day at work?
Strong employee engagement and culture are generally agreed to be crucial. Everyone wants the benefits, but who has time to work on them? The good news is that focusing on culture and engagement does not take much time and does not require much extra effort. It mainly involves a shift in mindset. If anything, it will create time and increase performance. Moreover, “operations” takes on a new meaning when one focuses on these things, and one’s sense of purpose is reinvigorated.
Here are a couple of actionable steps to cultivate engagement and culture:
Give your team a voice. Find out what their wants and needs are by asking them directly. Try a stop, start, and continue exercise. Make it anonymous if you are looking for the unvarnished truth. Ask them:
Stop: What should we stop doing? What is blocking your success? What policies would you like to modify or eliminate?
Start: What should we start doing? What changes would you like to see?
Continue: What do you love currently and want to see more of?
● Take their feedback seriously and take IMMEDIATE action.
Expediently remove their roadblocks to success. Do not leave problems and concerns to fester, or it will send the message that you do not care.
● Do not keep the results of the exercise a secret. Compile and share the results with everyone, along with specific actions you plan to take to remedy any problems.
● You will undoubtedly see the same feedback from multiple people. Tell the team how many people said the same thing. This helps to build community.
Do your people feel undervalued or underappreciated? You should assume that they do. Recognition is key. In The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard said, “When people feel good about themselves, they produce good results…help someone reach their full potential. Catch them doing something right.”
● Use recognition to reinforce behaviors. Others will see what gets them praise and replicate those behaviors.
● Recognition should be public. Share it with the entire team and put their names in lights for all to see.
● Do not burden people with another email or risk losing them in the shuffle. Set up a separate mass communication system, such as WhatsApp, only for praise or good news.
● Praise cannot wait. It must be timely and consistent. When your team does something good, they should hear about it without fail.
● Recognition must be specific. “Hard worker” is vague. “Good job” is insufficient.
Keep at it. Cultural shifts take time. Do not be discouraged by the naysayers. Bear in mind two common concerns. First, this focus is not to the exclusion of the business functioning properly. Next, this does not mean you cease upholding standards or holding people accountable. If anything, the team wants and needs that. Finally, talk about it. Speak it into existence. Share the result you are looking for, loud and clear.
Redefine operations to mean working for your team. The rest will take care of itself. ◆
TOMMY LEFKOWITZ, CPTM , is the Senior Director— Training, Service & Culture for One Parking. He can be reached at tlefkowitz@oneparking.com
Welcome to Just Right Parking: Where every space
Park Sentry
Minority Women in Engineering
Navigating Challenges and Breaking Barriers
By Ravali Kosaraju, PE, PTOE
THERE ARE MANY EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINORITY WOMEN once they enter the field of civil engineering. Historically a male-dominated discipline, women—especially women of color—are breaking through barriers and making strides toward greater representation. While challenges still exist, the resilience, talent, and determination of women in this field are driving significant progress.
simple conversation quickly turned into an argument, with both of us getting frustrated and eventually storming off the site. Later, my supervisor had to step in, sending a strongly worded email, reminding the contractor to keep things professional and follow contract terms. I felt humiliated that I couldn’t manage and resolve the issue on my own, in a calm manner. That one interaction shaped how I carried myself among men at work, especially if they appeared older than me. Over the years, I gained valuable tools and techniques for tackling individuals who overstep boundaries and having meaningful conversations to prevent those situations from recurring, both for myself and others.
Growing up, post-secondary education, specifically engineering, was a natural choice for me. I never had to convince my family about it or worry about being unable to attend because there wasn’t enough money for tuition. After all, both my parents had college degrees, and my mom graduated from electronics engineering, so I was naturally drawn to engineering. I did learn through several conversations over the years that this is not the case for many others. Less than 30% of my 2008 graduating class were women, and only 10% came from minority backgrounds. STEM fields were not as accessible to women, especially women of color, due to societal and familial biases, lack of role models, and exposure opportunities.
Even with all the right educational opportunities and a strong family support system, when I entered the workforce, I faced the reality that (civil) engineering was male-dominated.
On a chilly Fall morning, as a 25-year-old female engineer of color with a hopeful outlook, I had to confront a contractor on the job site. The contractor, a towering man in his 50s who’d been in the field longer than I had been alive, didn’t hold back on reminding me of that fact. The issue? The materials being used didn’t match the approved drawings. What started as a
This was also 13 years ago, and we’ve made some progress in understanding how gender, family, and cultural backgrounds play a role in how we show up in our respective roles in engineering. In conversations with a young female engineer of color in her early 20s, I learned that her experience has been slightly different (thankfully). In Elizabeth De Leon’s own words, “Women of different racial backgrounds face varying expectations or stereotypes from their peers, even when they have the same educational qualifications. However, these biases are becoming less common as more minority women prove their expertise and leadership abilities, gaining recognition for their technical skills and innovative contributions to the industry. I’ve seen this reflected most when sharing stories with colleagues and women leaders. Most of the time, my generation’s experiences involve a more welcoming environment in which mentors, allies, and champions provide an avenue from which to learn and grow our skills.”
Despite the progress being made, societal biases and expectations still present challenges for women in civil engineering. Whether it’s navigating judgments about “likeability” or facing assumptions about capabilities, many women encounter outdated perceptions. These biases may differ based on ethnicity, which can make the experience for minority women even more complex.
So, what can other leaders and allies do?
Mentorship is instrumental in helping women, especially those from marginalized groups, break through barriers. Organizations like the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) are providing vital resources such as mentorship programs, scholarships, and networking opportunities. These organizations help women build confidence and establish belonging in a sometimes-isolating field. De Leon noted that she has personally benefited from these communities and knows many others who have also found the guidance and encouragement they needed to succeed.
Women can and are redefining leadership
Traditionally, leadership roles have been associated with certain masculine traits, such as assertiveness and authority. However, today’s women leaders bring their unique qualities to the table, balancing independence, goal setting, and assertiveness with empathy and collaboration.
They are proving that leadership doesn’t have to conform to outdated standards and that women are strong, effective leaders while staying true to their values and identities.
Develop, grow, and support each other. While everyone has unique interests, responsibilities, and backgrounds, our shared willingness to find common ground and draw from each other’s strengths allows us to grow both as individuals and as professionals. Being part of a community that embraces diversity is crucial to fostering an inclusive environment where women feel empowered to thrive. ◆
RAVALI KOSARAJU, PE, PTOE , is the Director, Mobility for WGI, Inc., and a member of IPMI’s Allyship & Equity Committee. She can be reached at ravali.kosaraju@wginc.com.
Violations, Enforcement,
Lost Tickets
Photographic evidence and correct data for violations, enforcement, reservations, and lost tickets are instantly available to operators with our Parking Guidance System software. With a license plate inventory report, quickly discover where and when vehicles enter, park, and exit your parking facility.
Florida Parking and Transportation Association
FPTA Membership Unlock Your Potential in Networking, Learning, and Professional Growth
By Angel Diaz Jr.
IN THE EVER-EVOLVING WORLD OF PARKING, TRANSPORTATION, AND MOBILITY, the possibilities for innovation and connection are boundless! Staying ahead of industry trends and building strong relationships with peers is not just important—it’s essential. That’s where the Florida Parking and Transportation Association (FPTA) comes in, offering an unparalleled platform to ignite your professional journey.
Why Join FPTA?
FPTA membership isn’t just a checkbox—it’s your ticket to a thriving community of industry leaders, experts, and innovators. Whether you’re looking to supercharge your career, expand your knowledge, or connect with like-minded professionals, FPTA has something extraordinary to offer you.
Exciting Events You Won’t Want to Miss!
Annual Conference – The Industry’s Must-Attend Event!
Mark your calendar for the FPTA Annual Conference, the crown jewel of industry events! This is where over 300 parking and transportation pros from across the state gather to share, learn, and celebrate. It’s more than an event; it’s an experience. Whether you’re here to soak up the latest trends, discover
cutting-edge technologies, or forge connections that could transform your career, the Annual Conference is the place to be!
But that’s not all—if you’re looking to boost your brand’s visibility, the conference offers prime sponsorship opportunities. Imagine your company front and center before an audience of top industry leaders and decision-makers. This is your moment to shine!
Can’t wait for the Annual Conference? The Mid-Year Education Seminar is a chance to dive deeper into the industry’s hottest topics and trends. This intimate summer gathering is designed for meaningful conversations and networking that can spark new ideas and collaborations.
Whether you’re eager to learn from experts or share insights, this seminar is your playground for professional growth. Stay ahead of the curve and connect with peers who are as passionate about the industry as you are!
Unlock Exclusive Member Resources
Shine
a Spotlight on Your Organization
FPTA is all about celebrating its members! As a member, you have the exclusive opportunity to showcase your organization’s achievements, Bids and RFPs, articles, and news on the FPTA website and newsletters. It’s the perfect way to gain visibility, share your success stories, and connect with others who can benefit from your expertise.
Broadcast Your Success to the World
Got a new project? Celebrating a milestone? FPTA gives you the platform to shout it from the rooftops! Submit your press releases, case studies, and more to ensure your achievements are seen and celebrated by peers across the state. Your success is our success, and we’re here to help you amplify it!
FPTA membership isn’t just a checkbox—it’s your ticket to a thriving community of industry leaders, experts, and innovators.
Maximize Your Membership—Be an Active Participant!
FPTA isn’t just a membership—it’s a vibrant community waiting for you to jump in! From our flagship Annual Conference to our ongoing educational opportunities and member-exclusive resources, FPTA is your gateway to a world of possibilities.
Don’t just be a member—be an active participant, a networker, a learner, and a leader in this dynamic industry. Join FPTA today and unlock the full potential of your professional journey!
ANGEL DIAZ JR. is the Director of Operations for the Miami Parking Authority and President of the Florida Parking and Transportation Association. He can be reached at adiaz@miamiparking.com
EXPERTS ASK THE
What parking, transportation, or mobility trend do you foresee most impacting your operation?
What parking, transportation, or mobility trend do you foresee most impacting your operation?
Kenneth Smith, PE Technology Engineer
Kimley-Horn
Data analytics and increased data collection from transportation and parking systems have the potential to greatly impact operations by providing valuable insights for more informed decision-making. By leveraging this data, operators can identify patterns, optimize resource allocation, and improve efficiency.”
Carmen Donnell, CAPP
Managing Director, North America
PayByPhone
The unfortunate trend that I see impacting not only my operation but many around me is the prevalence of QR code and ‘Text to Pay’ fraud instances. Bad actors are in all our marketplaces trying to divert legitimate parking payments to illegitimate ‘companies,’ creating a loss of revenue for cities and their supporting vendors and creating a very poor parking experience, which we as an industry are always trying to combat!’
Seamus Wilmot
Assistant Vice Chancellor and Executive Director Business Operations
University of California, Berkeley
For our college campus, one of the biggest challenges is increased use of personally owned electric micromobility devices (scooters, skateboards, bicycles, Onewheels). The conflict between these fast-moving devices, pedestrians, and other vehicles poses collision risks. We have been able to geo-fence the commercial vehicles but have not been able to control the private vehicles. Add to this the challenge of students bringing the device into classrooms and dorms to charge and the fire risk.”
Many new trends impact Airport operations. Two items of note that are impacting or will impact airport operations – EV vehicle adoption will require adjustments to garage infrastructure in many cases due to heavier loads, potentially reducing stall counts, and alternate transportation companies such as Waymo, Turo, and Uber will continue to redefine how people get to and from the terminal. These modal changes can impact how current infrastructure is used or repurposed, future physical infrastructure needs, and airport revenue opportunities.”
Ashley Hiniker
Director of Operations
Chicago Parking Meters LLC
The transition from traditional walking enforcement to tickets-by-mail for on-street paid parking and permit systems. The evolution will improve the safety of enforcement agents by reducing public confrontations in the field when issuing violations, which continue to escalate in volume and severity within the past several years.”
Vicki Pero President Zephire
Increasingly, technology providers have open platforms that enable integrations between systems. This trend makes it possible for solution providers to specialize in core offerings versus trying to meet all operational requirements in one system. It’s a win-win for operators and solution providers because the result is a cohesive solution ecosystem that serves the parking operation and end users.”
HAVE A QUESTION? Send it to editor@parking-mobility. org and watch this space for answers from the experts.
Derek Breniman Vice President – Business Development HONK
The spreading legislature of removing parking minimums across major metropolitan areas that allow new construction without parking and the ‘unbundling’ of lease/rent payments from parking permits. Not having real estate developers subsidizing the cost of parking and allowing market economics to determine pricing, in addition to sharpening the supply curve, will be a coming parking fee renaissance in progressive cities across North America.”
Lynn
Wiggs, CAPP Director, Transportation Services
Texas A&M University,
College Station
Personal electric vehicles (PEV) are and will continue to be the biggest impact. The issue is where do you park them, should we supply charging options, how do you make one design fit all? Should PEVs figure into the plans moving forward as we build new facilities? Bike racks are a temporary solution but won’t withstand the current pace of growth and availability.”
Brian D. Shaw, CAPP
Executive Director Stanford University Transportation
The continuation of hybrid working schedules impacts our ability to provide commute benefits, particularly for carpoolers. Developing and using technology to determine if a hybrid commuter came to work and if they carpooled will be necessary for as long as hybrid working schedules remain in effect. We plan to work on solutions to this issue in the coming year.”
Chris Phenner VP, Business Development Flash, Inc.
Millions of dollars of digital parking transactions are made daily, increasingly via apps like Google Maps and Waze. We believe best practices within Local SEO and AI search will profoundly impact which parking locations are ‘found’ via search and how transactions are booked.”
Kelsey Owens VP, Account Management IPS
A trend impacting parking operations is the uptick in municipalities opting to use grant funding for parking initiatives. Technology-driven parking initiatives, especially those that enhance public safety or reduce congestion, are eligible for funding in the “infrastructure improvements” category through ARPA or SMART grants. Additionally, as cities continue to streamline the parking experience by offering more payment options with solutions like Text-To-Pay, grants can be used to purchase digital signage to communicate options to parkers. Leveraging various funding options will be key to addressing the growing demand for more innovative, technology-driven parking solutions.”
Matt Brooker Vice President of Sales Automotus
I think we’ll continue to see growing use of automation in all areas of the industry to improve customer experience, operational efficiency, and compliance. I think we’ll also see continued adoption of data standards like the Curb Data Specification (CDS) to break down siloes between parking, mobility, transit, etc.”
Jim Anderson Independent A/E/C Market Development Executive
AI will be a transformational element to all aspects of transportation, mobility and parking operations, vendor and service efficiencies. Its benefits will unfold in various ways across the broad market sector favorably impacting operational management.”
Susan Cole Founder Cole Ticket Solutions
A major trend impacting operations for CTS and our customers is the volatility of supply chain logistics and labor union strikes. Closures and work stoppages not only create delays in receiving products needed to collect revenue but also increase costs in deliveries and management of those products, which can severely impact the bottom line.”
Christina Jones, CAPP Transportation
Services Management Analyst
City of Iowa City
Given the escalating aggression directed at frontline staff, we anticipate a growing necessity for dedicated time and financial resources to bolster training initiatives, procure essential equipment (including vehicles and personal protective gear), and amplify public outreach efforts aimed at safeguarding staff well-being and fostering employee retention. Moreover, the surge in e-commerce and on-demand deliveries exacerbates congestion along the right-ofway. At the same time, the prevalence of non-compliant drivers among these users continues to pose significant enforcement challenges. To effectively address these evolving demands, we must move toward a more adaptable and proactive approach to curb lane management.”
The Leading Credential in Parking & Mobility
Tavris Parker, CAPP
Parking Operations Supervisor
My Badge of Honor. I wear it with pride. Sometimes it’s not how fast you get there, it’s that you get there! My journey to obtain my CAPP started in 2006 on my first day as an Enforcement Officer. I have learned something new every day since.”
City of Virginia Beach
See, Understand
See, Understand, & Communicate
Leveraging Technology to Boost Customer Retention & Revenue
& COMMUNICATE COMMUNICATE
Leveraging Technology to Boost Customer Retention & Revenue
By Sarah Becherer, Andrew Sachs, CAPP, Christopher Perry, CAPP, Andrew Lamothe, and Danyell Little
By Sarah Becherer, Andrew Sachs, CAPP, Christopher Perry, CAPP, Andrew Lamothe, and Danyell Little on behalf of the IPMI Technology Committee
DATA HAS BEEN DRIVING DECISION-MAKING within parking for some time, and new opportunities continue to emerge as we develop new foundations and scaffolding for data collection and exchange.
However, even for the most tech-enabled and data-savvy parking operators or asset owners, instances remain where our assets are underutilized, underperforming, or producing undesirable customer experiences.
We can’t foresee every interaction between people and people, people and equipment, or people and technology that takes place within our microenvironments. But we can use data to systematically create, prevent, or prepare for these instances.
In this exploration, we’ll refer to the practice of leveraging data to accomplish this as the art of “Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating.”
● See: Meticulously access the data and surface it
● Understand: Apply analysis and business intelligence
● Communicate: Show it to the right platforms and people
This comprehensive approach to data transforms parking into a strategic asset.
Let’s get down to brass tacks with some specific examples of how “See, Understand, and Communicate” can be applied: operations, commercial, municipalities, and hospitality.
Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating: Operations
In parking operations, levers pulled using data on customer habits immediately affect a location’s performance. Metrics such as average dwell time and occupancy highlight the trends around existing demand and focus on maximizing results based on a known customer population. Using data gleaned from a known population to achieve optimized revenue results from that population is certainly logical. What about the customers outside of that population who aren’t parking at the location due to a poor customer experience?
Trends that negatively impact customer service lead to customer loss. Therefore, we need to examine the data from the opposite side to learn how to generate new revenue and prevent customer churn.
The data required for this analysis in a staffed or valet facility is already available in existing operational reports:
● Staff schedules.
● Parking transaction data.
● Session data.
● Heat maps of open and closed ticket times.
Overlayed with each other, these datasets yield insight into demand’s ebbs and flows, which can be directly correlated with tariff adjustments, staffing schedules, and unnecessary operational expenses.
For example, understaffing could lead to a poor parking experience and potential loss of customer revenue, while overstaffing could lead to unnecessary operational expenses. Understanding the data can help determine the optimal balance.
Here’s a use case with LPR that provides insight into the customer experience:
● In a valet-staffed facility equipped with LPR, a monthly parker arrives. LPR immediately recognizes them as recurring customers and pre-populates the required information with the digital ticket.
● All that is left is for the attendant to finish the check-in process. This check-in is required as it tracks the vehicle transfer from the customer to the operator.
● If the LPR entry timestamp reads 8:00 a.m. and the claim check start time is 8:07 a.m., then that gap represents the time the customer waited before being fully checked in by the valet and free to go about their business.
● The summary of these time gaps could demonstrate staffing or service shortfalls that could negatively impact on the customer experience.
A manager who sees this data point can understand the customer service issue and then take actionable steps to improve the quality of customer service. The key is overlaying the datasets to see how the trends impact one another. The timing of the trends is as important as the trends themselves.
Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating: Commercial
In the past, when the cost of generating actionable research was cost-prohibitive, Burger King adopted an approach known as the Spillover Effect to leverage McDonald’s market presence to optimize its store locations. The approach was simple yet effective: strategically position Burger King outlets within sightline of McDonald’s outlets. This “spillover” tactic allowed Burger King to expand its footprint without the high costs of conducting its own market research. It relied instead on the assumption that McDonald’s had already invested in extensive research to identify prime locations.
Commercial operators have simplified the spillover approach to a quick rate survey and adjusted location pricing to match or slightly undercut the clustered competition.
However, this “spillover light” approach constitutes a significant opportunity cost in today’s data-rich environment, where operators can make informed decisions quickly and accurately using readily available data instead of guesswork based on competitors’ prices.
Modern PARCS (Parking Access and Revenue Control Systems) allows operators to adjust rates in real-time, often with just a few keystrokes. Rates, from regular pricing to event rates, can be adjusted based on real-time demand. For instance, if a lot has a $25 rate for a baseball game but demand is low, the operator can swiftly reduce the rate to $20. Conversely, if demand surges at the $25 rate, it can be increased to $35 just as easily.
For such a responsive strategy to work, there must be a seamless data flow between attendants and management. With cloud-based PARCS, the manager can be anywhere, even across the country, and still make real-time adjustments.
When aggregators are part of the equation, pricing strategies can become even more potent. Rates can be tiered based on occupancy, meaning that as the facility fills up, the price increases, maximizing revenue as spaces become scarcer. This automation reduces the need for constant monitoring.
Dynamic pricing engines further simplify the process by automatically setting rates based on real-time demand data. These systems lower prices during slow periods to attract customers and increase rates during busy times to maximize profits, constantly adjusting to find the optimal price point.
This use of big data and sophisticated algorithms by dynamic pricing engines allows operators to finetune pricing with precision, ensuring the most efficient and profitable use of their assets without the need for constant oversight.
Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating: Municipalities
In municipal parking environments, data drives policy. Cities plan for residents’ future needs, and data is one of the most valuable assets in this planning process.
Technology providers and operation specialists in municipalities are responsible for understanding the sensitivity and complexity of the ecosystems in which we operate and for creating agile systems for data examination and communication.
Beyond seeing the data, we aim to ensure it is digestible for each relevant subgroup.
We must prioritize creating transparent systems that can quickly identify the client’s needs and policy changes, which provides reassurance and confidence in our processes.
When communicating with municipal clients regarding data, it’s essential to review:
● How do current policies impact how technology is implemented and deployed?
● How do deployment and curb management needs differ based on details like city and state ordinances and laws?
● What are the current needs of the city?
● What are the current and future goals of the city?
These questions will guide municipal parking professionals in creating mobility synergy within the city’s ecosystem, use cases, and seasonality of operations.
Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating: Hospitality
As data and the scaffolding and mechanisms for seeing, understanding, and communicating parking data evolve, we see more opportunities for engagement with adjacent industries, such as hospitality. The opportunity for parking that data cracks open in the hotel industry is in terms of helping hotels understand that their parking assets can be utilized and monetized not just for guests of their hotel but for non-guests, as well.
Non-guest parking represents a staggeringly large ancillary revenue stream for hotels and strongly
impacts net operating income (NOI) and bottom-line profitability. However, many hotels aren’t tapping it as they perceive it as a distraction from their core business: the guest experience.
We need data to wake hotels up to this possibility and overcome the ubiquitous assumption that a parking space will never be as valuable as a room or food and beverage (even though, with a little back-of-the-napkin math, it’s arguable that there are few products for a hotel that are more lucrative than self-parking).
Some data points that we can surface to shift this mindset:
● Inventory (# parking spaces).
● Parking spaces/room (how much parking is allocated for guests).
● Average hotel occupancy (how often are they full, AKA they will have the least amount of “extra” parking inventory to sell to non-guests?)
● Points of interest in microclimate (physical proximity to airports, convention centers, hotels, event venues, and commercial districts).
● Online demand for parking (via aggregators).
The key is to leverage data to show hotels that they do, in fact, have excess parking inventory (more parking than they need for their guests) and that the demand for that parking inventory from non-guests exists for their location.
The good news is that the landscape is ripe for transformation, and data moves the needle. The hospitality industry is five to ten years ahead of parking in terms of data standardization, system integration, and technology adoption. They have already widely adopted tech that parallels much of what exists or is being developed in parking today.
Online travel agents (or OTAs) are branded ad-driven consumer marketplaces that enable the pre-booking of hotel rooms that parallel aggregators in their functionality (driving massive consumer demand). And hotel revenue management systems (HRMS) allow hotels to centrally manage room pricing across channels at the room type and rate code level for optimal yield.
Hotels also have a mature revenue management function: maximizing revenue based on the principle that demand varies over time and that businesses can use data and analytics to predict customer behavior and price accordingly.
To start, operators can use data from aggregators to prove that online demand exists and show how much customers are willing to pay. Then, they can implement a relatively low-cost handheld POS system for redemption and access. That’s a low enough barrier to entry to overcome any hotel’s reluctance to make hefty up-front investments.
Then, when parking revenue starts accelerating, use that data to justify the implementation of more sophisticated equipment,
such as gates, PARCS, and sensors, that can collect even more data about the length of stay, ingress, and egress, etc., to make even more informed decisions about pricing and inventory management.
Conclusion
We’ve explored examples of how the Seeing, Understanding, and Communicating approach can be used to gather, connect, and apply data. Its applications go far beyond improving customer experience and pricing strategies.
In today’s big data landscape, even a single data point can provide valuable insights—if you’re paying attention and ready to act. For instance, while one negative customer review might seem like an isolated incident, it often signals a deeper, systemic issue that needs management’s attention.
As parking professionals, we have the opportunity – and responsibility – to leverage data to strengthen connections within our industry and enhance the value we offer to related industries. By doing so, we can drive higher revenue and create a better experience for our customers.
SARAH BECHERER is Vice President, Marketing for Ocra and a member of the IPMI Technology Committee. She can be reached at sarah@getocra.com
ANDREW SACHS, CAPP is the President of Gateway Parking Services and a member of the IPMI Technology Committee. He can be reached at andrew@gpsparking. com
CHRISTOPHER PERRY, CAPP , is Senior Vice President of National Sales and Operations for Parking Base and a member of the IPMI Technology Committee. He can be reached at chris.perry@parkingbase.com
ANDREW LAMOTHE is Vice President of Business Development for IPS Group and a member of the IPMI Technology Committee. He can be reached at andrew. lamothe@ipsgroup.com
DANYELL LITTLE is the Regional Manager of ATLPlus & Director of Client Success, Municipal Division for SP+, a Metropolis Company, and a member of the IPMI Technology Committee. She can be reached at dlittle@ spplus.com
PARKING for
PROGRESS
Creating Community-Centered and Sustainable Spaces
By Kansas Crane
HISTORICALLY, parking facilities have been seen as fairly static spaces—functional, but underutilized. In recent years, many communities, developers, and designers have focused on the integration of mixed-use spaces into parking to not only more effectively use often limited real estate, but also to generate more activity and pedestrian connectivity in and around these important structures. Incorporating residential, retail, restaurant, office, and green spaces within the garage footprint serves as a valuable and attractive strategy for communities in need of additional parking.
The integration of these internal mixeduse spaces has helped to transform the possibilities of the areas used for parking facilities. However, another strategy has emerged for maximizing the potential of these spaces as vibrant hubs for activity— community partnerships. Today, many parking owners and operators are targeting opportunities to transform their parking structures, and the surrounding areas, into spaces that support activities like athletic courts and fields, sustainable infrastructure, and more. These partnerships have successfully created opportunities for community engagement and development, while further maximizing the usefulness of their parking structures.
Parking as a Catalyst for Community Progress
With the right approach, parking lots and garages can serve as the foundation for a wide range of community resources, addressing both social and economic needs. Partnerships between parking owners and operators along with community organizations are becoming more commonplace, and as we continue to see successful outcomes, we can look forward to seeing even more of these instances. Examples of local organizations using parking facilities for community events include utilizing the top levels
of a parking structure for pickle ball or basketball courts, soccer fields, yoga summits, or parks and green spaces—creating vibrant hubs for physical activity and recreation. Large parking lots can be used for farmer’s markets, gathering spaces during marathons, food truck events, and more. Other opportunities include integrating sustainable initiatives like EV charging stations, bike storage, car share pick-up and drop-off, or zero emission delivery zones.
Parking is often the end point of a journey, but it can also support the beginning of change. Parking facilities are essential to the future of urban development. Not only do they provide much needed space to support parking demand in urban areas, but without this infrastructure, progress in areas like EV charging, alternative transportation, and urban freight would be very limited. As forwardthinking parking owners and operators continue to identify creative ways to utilize parking assets, these properties will play a vital role in the evolution of modern cities.
community development can help parking operators identify potential partnerships that align with their goals, values, and the capacity of their parking assets.
Successful partnerships are built on flexibility, innovation, and collaboration.
Best Practices for Building Successful Partnerships
While the possibilities for utilizing parking lots and structures for community purposes are endless, there are many conversations, tasks, and arrangements that must occur first. Successful partnerships like these are built on flexibility, innovation, and collaboration.
For instance, many parking operators typically engage in month-to-month leases for their contracts. However, organizations may need to adapt to longerterm commitments when integrating new amenities or services. For example, a parking facility in Los Angeles will soon be used for local padel tennis courts. The garage operator and the padel court owners negotiated a long-term lease over several years, ensuring investment protection terms for both the padel court and parking facility owners. This not only offers stability, but also a long-term space for community engagement.
Another important component of these partnerships is being open-minded, innovative, and adaptable. Facilitating collaboration between real estate and
In some cases, public agencies may directly pursue parking operators for support. For instance, the Texas Facilities Commission recently worked to collaborate with Vanta Athletics to launch Austin’s first ever rooftop soccer field. They are also in talks with soccer federations and leagues to provide free or reduced soccer activities for children throughout the community. In this case, parking operators worked with the city to identify parking facilities in the downtown core that could support these activities on the top level of their parking structures. This partnership has benefited members of the local community who wouldn’t have otherwise had access to these opportunities, as well as the city’s social and economic goals.
As parking operators engage in these partnerships, it’s essential to be mindful of issues that could impede these partnerships or cause significant headaches or delays. These issues can include cumbersome permitting processes, difficult contractual terms, or the long-term vision for the space.
Another barrier could be the structural capacity of the parking facility. Many garages, while built to withstand the load of vehicles within the garage, may not be built to withstand the additional load of people and the activity of these events. It is important to engage a structural engineer to evaluate the capacity of the parking facility in line with the anticipated program or event to ensure the safety and security of the garage, its patrons, and the community utilizing the alternative spaces.
For these projects, it is vital to ensure that all stakeholders agree, that the structure has been sufficiently evaluated, and that there is a clear understanding of expectations. A preliminary evaluation of all these potential issues, and the steps needed to resolve them, will lead to more successful and sustainable partnerships.
Looking Forward: The Future of Parking and Community Collaboration
Parking facilities will continue to play a vital role in the future of community engagement opportunities, as well as the success of important modern amenities and sustainability features like EV charging, delivery solutions, and more. These structures are the perfect platform to support the rapidly evolving needs of communities across the country from alternative transportation and mobility options to community events, and beyond. Whether it’s adding infrastructure for electric bikes, working with car sharing companies, creating urban freight hubs for zero-emission vehicles, or partnering with community activity organizations, parking will be at the forefront of urban transformation while providing much-needed support to ensure successful outcomes.
In the coming years, the utilization of parking facilities will continue to evolve, driven by partnerships
In the coming years, the utilization of parking facilities will continue to evolve, driven by partnerships that prioritize sustainability, innovation, and community well-being.
that prioritize sustainability, innovation, and community well-being. By embracing these changes, parking owners and operators can turn their properties into essential components of the urban landscape— places that not only serve drivers but also contribute to the greater good of the community.
Ultimately, parking facilities are more than just places to park—they are the foundation for future progress in both the public and private sectors. By leveraging their unique position within the urban environment, parking operators can help shape the future of cities, ensuring that their spaces are vibrant, flexible, and integral to community life. ◆
KANSAS CRANE is Senior Director of Partnerships for LAZ Parking. She can be reached at kbayly@lazparking.com.
Next Thing The Big
BY ANDY BESS
Parking and Mobility Trends To Keep Your Eye On
WE ALL LOVE TREND STORIES.
In addition to being fun to read, they also provide insight into where the industry is going. As an investor and financial advisor, I need to understand trends so I can recognize where opportunities lie. But it’s just as important to understand trends even if you aren’t looking for investment opportunities. They can help you understand what technologies to consider (and stay away from) and they can help provide clarity about how you should be running your own organization.
The following are the parking and mobility trends that I think are most interesting—and most important—today.
The EV Landscape
Many industry investors today are casting a critical eye on the EV segment. The federal government has gone all-in when it comes to promoting EV charging and the technology that’s needed for EVs to succeed. However, there’s a sense among many industry insiders and investors that the initial excitement around electric vehicles has faded. Adoption has been slower than expected, critical charging infrastructure’s growing pains are well-documented, and automakers are revising their timelines for going full-electric.
In fact, we seem to be in a period of transition in which consumers are turning to hybrids rather than fully electric vehicles. It makes sense, since charger uptime and range anxiety are legitimate concerns. However, EVs are not going away: by 2030, close to 25% of the cars parked in an average garage will plug in and, since the vast majority of EV charging companies do not provide
on-site customer support, parking owners and operators are the most logical client-facing service providers. So, what does this all mean for parking owners and operators? First, a comprehensive EV plan for your entire operation is imperative; operators will need to be able to accommodate EV vehicles at scale by the end of the decade (which isn’t that far off). There’s a broad consensus that most EV charging will be done at home overnight—level-3 fast chargers have their place on highways and near other long-haul hubs, but the vast majority of chargers are likely to be level 2. Consumers are unlikely to pay a dramatic premium for electrons away from home if they can avoid it. Away-from-home, longer-dwell parking is generally around work and entertainment, along with retail elements like malls. Charging at work would be a logical way for government to incentivize EV usage through pre-tax expensing, similar to public-transit commuter reimbursement programs. Similarly, providing charging as an amenity at retailers (through a validation program, for example) has the potential to increase traffic as well as modify visit patterns (e.g. a grocery store offering discounted charging during otherwise-slow hours, in order to smooth demand peaks and resultant staffing needs.)
Charging can be an important customer amenity that will encourage EV drivers to use your garage or lot instead of the facilities of your competition. It’s a matter of keeping up with, or getting ahead of, the competition.
The Integration Wave
Dan Roarty of Flash Parking has been describing the holy grail of parking guidance for almost a decade: get in your car at home, punch your destination into your dash map, receive rates and real-time occupancy information about the parking alternatives nearest to your destination, and reserve a spot while you’re in transit, all from inside the mapping app. As parking technology companies integrate their data with Google, Waze, and OEM dashboard apps, this scenario is coming closer and closer to reality.
It’s an exciting development, but there’s an important message for owners and operators: to become visible to connected drivers, operators will need to provide rate and occupancy data accurately in real time. Otherwise, your locations won’t show up on the map. As you choose new parking guidance systems, PARCs equipment, LPR, and other tools, make sure that the technologies you consider enable this type of integration.
Parking Management Technology
Parking management software is increasingly important to operators. Parking management platforms manage the parking transaction from beginning to end. For hourly sessions, they collect parking fees through a prearranged account or PARCS equipment, calculate taxes, and distribute the collected money to the appropriate
Parking management platforms manage the parking transaction from beginning to end. For hourly sessions, they collect parking fees through a pre-arranged account or PARCS equipment, calculate taxes, and distribute the collected money to the appropriate account.
account. The best platforms also calculate the necessary taxes and provide detailed reports of how much tax is owed and to whom. The platforms also collect utilization data and provide owners and operators with detailed reports of how many vehicles are parked in the facility during a particular time, when they are parked, and where they are parked in the facility (if the platform is set up to measure that). This information can then be used to manage facilities better.
But as important as parking management platforms are, they all ultimately require a real-world interface. Some garages and lots rely on LPR to record plate information and transmit it to the platform, while others use systems in which the platform is integrated into a PARCS system. Still others use both. We may be entering the software age of parking technology, but success still relies on the hardware with which the platforms are integrated. I speak to investors regularly who “don’t want to invest in companies that sell hardware”, but that ultimately leaves the software provider one step removed from the end user and not in complete control of the user experience.
Build vs Buy
There is currently a debate around parking technology: build vs buy. Many operators are designing their proprietary technology to support payments, permitting,
and even enforcement. The thought is that this investment differentiates an operator from competitors and is ultimately cheaper than licensing the capability from a third party. Other operators are content to provide traditional operations services, continuing with manual processes or using one of several systems available. The “build” approach has lured many for the past few years, but it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
It’s costly to build your own technology. Many companies evaluate the cost of building a proprietary management system without fully considering the ongoing maintenance costs of complex technology, from integrating with new hardware offerings to adding features to keep up with competitors. Worse, if you try to sell a company with its own tech stack, the buyer will most likely discard it in favor of their own, and they will consider that switching cost in their valuation.
between technology providers, with the winners developing economies of scale that allow them to offer their technology at lower prices, further reinforcing their positions.
There is a size at which internal technology development does make sense, but I would argue that the tipping point is well up the size scale. There is a reason that companies like Oracle and SAP have been so successful.
Standardization and Education
Automation is the order of the day in our industry. The evolution to automation began before the pandemic, but COVID-19 and the public health challenges it presented significantly accelerated it.
Paradoxically, the more automated the parking process, the more critical the operator becomes. Drivers need to be taught how all this new technology works. If new parking systems are too confusing or difficult to use, parkers and property owners can become frustrated or lose trust in billing systems, and operators risk losing hard-earned contracts.
Operators and technology providers must be highly collaborative to ensure that equipment and signage that educates parkers on using their equipment is intuitive and easy to use.
Third-party technologies, on the other hand, can add significant value to an operator, and that value has the potential to compound. By streamlining operations, a company can reduce costs and enable faster growth with fewer employees requiring training to execute manual, error-prone tasks. That said, there’s likely a shake-out of some sort coming. Many third-party technology companies are serving the parking and mobility markets right now, and for each one to sign up enough customers to succeed, our industry would need to be 10x its current size. There are a lot of terrific solutions out there, but there’s more technology than opportunities. There’s likely to be significant consolidation
Who is responsible for providing this education? Well, everyone, actually. Operators can play an essential part by offering clear, concise signage indicating how to use the technology in their garages and lots and strong customer support through call centers and trained staff. However, technology providers have an essential role, too. Requiring parkers to navigate wildly different systems on a lot-by-lot basis sows confusion and discontent. A level of standardization between different systems’ user interfaces would benefit the entire industry. Operators and technology providers must be highly collaborative to ensure that equipment and signage that educates parkers on using their equipment is intuitive and easy to use.
An Investor’s Eye
As an investor and advisor, my focus is on identifying new technologies that will improve the parking experience, make parking operations more manageable and cost-effective, and make parking ownership more profitable. These also matter most to parkers, operators, and owners. Understand these trends and how they impact the parking landscape, and you are well on your way to making your parking more manageable, profitable, and attractive to your customers.
ANDY
BESS is a Managing Director at TrueNorth Capital Partners. He can be reached at abess@truenorthcp. com
Preparing Present and Future Leaders for What Lies Ahead.
FEBRUARY
1820, 2025
One Ocean Resort & Spa - Atlantic Beach, Florida
Join the leaders of parking, mobility, and transportation for two days of learning, networking, and career development. Take your seat among the brightest minds our industry has to offer and learn with the best.
Anthony Huey, CSP® Communicate Clearly Opening Keynote: Crisis! Are you Ready?
2025 Speakers include:
Kenya Rutland KJR Consulting Equity-Minded Decision Making
Perry H. Eggleston, DPA, CAPP and Ramon Zavala University of California, Davis Paradigm-Inverting Operational Change Leadership
Chotejaruchaiya, Julia Crooks, and Shayna Hodges University of Maryland, College Park
MAPS - A Program Exploring Career Pathways
Mo McCanna, SHRM-CP Modii
Thinking About How We Think: Becoming Stronger Leaders Through Metacognition
Avoiding a Flat Tire: Preventing Burnout and Financial Strain within Your Parking & Mobility Team
LTC Oakland McCulloch U.S. Army, Retired Ignite Your Leadership Potential
... with more content to be announced soon.
Tanya
Data-Driven
A WAVE OF DIGITAL PARKING INNOVATIO
N has transformed the industry in the last few years. Parking apps are widespread, and the adoption of digital parking payment has soared thanks to user-friendly features designed to meet customers’ demands who increasingly value convenience and connected experiences.
While parking operations continue to reap the benefits of digital parking, they also face new challenges, such as aging hardware, sustainability initiatives, dwindling curbside space, and more. Unfortunately, traditional business models, inflexible solutions, and strict vendor relationships often prevent them from fully leveraging digital parking solutions to address these challenges.
In response, some in the digital parking industry are doubling down on enhancing backend tools and self-service options to provide cities, universities, and other parking providers greater operational flexibility and insights. This is paired with cities exploring new business models and contracts that better utilize the unique benefits of digital solutions. The results of this shift have been nothing short of astounding. While the end-user experience remains top of mind for digital solution providers, these client-friendly parking and mobility tools are proving themselves an effective way to accelerate collaboration, innovation, and digitalization.
By empowering parking providers with better ways to visualize and manage their parking environment independently, they can
improve the customer experience while overcoming the limits of traditional parking models like never before.
The Rising Need for Flexible Parking Solutions
The need for flexibility within the parking and transportation industry isn’t anything new. For users, the emphasis on flexible features has truly paid off. Today’s digital parking customers have more ways to pay, reserve parking, and check parking status than ever before. The creation of these features was driven in no small part by the rapid acceleration of digital payments and connected experiences in other industries—digital parking providers had to innovate to meet changing demand and expectations.
However, parking operations’ needs tend to be more nuanced and specific. Phaseouts of 2G networks are decommissioning vast numbers of meters, and aging hardware contributes to substantial financial losses. The acceleration of digitization and the demand for quantitative, data-based analysis of transportation pressures are growing. In many universities and cities, sustainability initiatives drive the need to implement and measure substantial
How Digital Parking Providers Are Promoting Innovation
Solutions
By Nathan Would
policy adjustments. Additionally, limited curbside space and the unique needs of different customer segments put pressure on parking programs to make long-needed updates.
Smart mobility solutions and digital parking platforms are perfectly suited to address these challenges in theory—but in practice, the flexibility enjoyed by parking app users isn’t always extended to operations.
For Digital Solutions to Move Forward, So Does Our Approach
Local governments, businesses, venues, and customers have almost universally embraced the benefits of digital tools and data. On top of that, digital parking solutions are more sophisticated and reliable than ever. So, why do some cities and other parking operations still feel hamstrung in their ability to make meaningful changes? Fundamentally, there are two causes.
First, the capacity of a city or other parking operator to respond to specific transportation challenges is often limited by what features their chosen digital parking provider has on offer. In other words, strict vendor agreements can mean that some digital parking solutions inadvertently dictate what their clients can or cannot do operationally. This is exacerbated when backend tools to manage parking policies are inflexible. If a specific problem arises, identifying and coming up with the solution often necessitates the full involvement of the technology partner.
That links directly to the second factor limiting parking operations today: a lack of data and insights. While other business sectors soar ahead thanks to data-driven insights, many of those
managing parking programs are still relying on an incomplete picture formed of transaction numbers, customer feedback, and intuition. Having a centralized source of accurate transportation data is ideal for parking operators and their technology partners to quickly get to the root causes of a problem and collaborate on an appropriate response.
For many years, digital parking platforms were considered adjacent to traditional payment hardware, existing within similar vendor relationships and offering similar (if not more convenient) functionality. However, parking operators’ needs and the possibilities contained in digital solutions have outgrown these constraints.
This has sparked a subtle but significant realization for many of us in the digital parking industry. Now, there’s an increased focus on creating more modular, self-service tools that give parking operations added visibility into their ecosystem and more autonomy to make meaningful changes to their parking and mobility operations.
Technology isn’t the only area heeding the rising winds of change. Many traditional business models and vendor contracts are being scrutinized as the role of parking apps and data-driven operations becomes more significant. Many cities, technology vendors, and app providers are finding new arrangements to boost competition and innovation.
How Giving Clients More Flexibility Has Paid Off for Everyone
The hope among many digital parking providers was that offering
more self-service insights and backend systems would, at a minimum, make dayto-day parking operations easier for cities. Instead, giving parking operators more robust tools resulted in many benefits we didn’t see coming. Flexible solutions and data help streamline daily operations and empower parking providers of all shapes and sizes to independently innovate and improve the customer experience in exciting new ways.
With more client-facing digital parking features and business models, cities across the United States can more effectively collaborate with and leverage digital parking to take control of their parking future while better addressing the unique needs of their customers.
Enabling Asset Light with Better Insights
Columbus, Ohio, hosted IPMI’s 2024 Parking & Mobility Conference & Expo this past June - for good reason! Columbus has been at the forefront of leveraging digital tools to modernize its parking and transportation programs and enrich people’s lives.
Like many cities, Columbus had the ambitious goal of transitioning to an assetlight parking infrastructure. Also, like many cities, it faced an impending shutdown of its 2G single-space meters. This meant that its asset-light dream had to become a reality in a very short amount of time.
Flexible, client-facing tools were instrumental in the success of their assetlight transition. The city relied on digital parking solutions to independently monitor progress and make on-the-fly policy adjustments. The result was a rapid removal of over 3,000 single-space meters, replaced by a mixture of kiosks and digital parking, including several mobile-only parking areas. Now, over 90% of parking payments are made in a digital app, which has boosted parking payment compliance citywide.
Perhaps more importantly, the city is partnering with technology providers to
gain insights into their parking data, such as inventory and occupancy. This visibility has been instrumental in communicating transportation needs to the public and collaborating with stakeholders and the digital solutions themselves. Data allows them to accurately identify appropriate improvements and effectively monitor the impact of rate and policy changes.
For cities like Columbus, tools that provide added visibility and policy control are essential for them to respond directly to the public’s needs and concerns. Stories like these emphasize the increasing importance of data and insights for smart policy creation and asset-light transitions. Consequently, digital parking solutions will increasingly need to put resources into developing client-facing tools to stay relevant with forward-thinking parking operations.
Trying Innovative Multivendor Arrangements to Meet Modern Customer Demand
A common complaint has emerged among consumers lately: people are sick of downloading new apps all the time. Like shopping or ride-share apps, today’s consumers prefer using parking apps they’re already comfortable with. The feeling is mutual, with many cities, especially those with many tourists or visitors, wishing they could offer the parking apps that people use in other areas or nationwide.
Until recently, strict vendor arrangements limited a city’s ability to leverage other popular parking apps and address this common complaint. Even these business models have changed. Digital parking solutions’ willingness to work in flexible, cooperative contracts
allows cities to take control of what features and innovations they offer their customers.
In the past few years, we’ve seen cities like Asbury Park, New Jersey, take advantage of these flexible arrangements to implement what’s known as an “open market” parking model. This model allows cities to open digital parking to any number of trusted vendors who can offer their own fee structures and features.
In the past, multivendor agreements tended to add complexity to parking operations and cause confusion among users. However, the digital parking space and the use of apps in general have matured considerably. Far from adding backend complexity, Asbury Park saw more uptime and rapid growth in digital transactions and parking adoption. Digital payments now account for over 75% of their total parking transactions—a trend that continues to increase month over month.
This multivendor, collaborative approach, once unheard of in the digital parking space, allows cities to offer customers a better parking experience while taking steps toward less time-consuming and restrictive vendor contract models. Other major U.S. cities, including Tampa, Pittsburgh, and Oakland, are also succeeding with a similar approach. The open market model is growing in popularity with parking operators and customers.
While an open market, multivendor approach may not be the ideal fit for every market today, experiments in new business models have shown us what cities can achieve when parkers are given the freedom to choose their preferred method of payment.
Invaluable Lessons for Digital Parking Providers
The success of embracing client-friendly tools and parking agreements has provided some thought-provoking lessons for our industry to consider as it moves forward.
First and foremost, we’ve learned that no digital parking solution can entirely dictate the optimal end-user experience. Even cities within the same state can have vastly different challenges and goals. As we’ve seen, self-service features and parking data are vital to addressing these unique customer demands and parking challenges. Going forward, effective collaboration will mean developing tools that give parking
To best serve their customers and clients, parking technology providers should focus less on competing for contracts and more on competing in functionality and added-value features.
operators self-service insights and multiple solutions to tackle problems their way.
Second, the benefits of digital parking can’t be fully realized if technology providers continue to operate within traditional parking models. Inflation, sustainability needs, customer demands, technology phaseouts, and other pressing issues require a rapid response. Maintaining strict business models and vendor contracts limits a parking provider’s ability to respond to change. To best serve their customers and clients, parking technology providers should focus less on competing for contracts and more on competing in functionality and added-value features.
Finally, we’ve seen how consumer choice and client flexibility are intrinsically linked. Allowing users to pay via app, web, text, IVR, and other methods allows clients to engage directly with their customers and creates a frictionless user experience. In other words, making solutions as accessible as possible is another key component of empowering client operations.
Building a Better Parking Experience with Client-Centric Tools
An increasing number of cities, universities, and independent parking operators understand that more access to parking data and self-service options is good for their customers. To stay relevant, digital parking providers will need to continue to focus on ways to provide better insights and flexible client-facing tools.
Does this mean digital parking solutions should focus less on the user experience? Not in the slightest. Instead, it emphasizes how the client and user experience go hand in hand. Empowering our clients fosters better collaboration, allowing them to articulate their needs and the needs of their customers better. In turn, this inspires digital solution providers to innovate more effectively—everyone wins.
The scale of data-driven operations requires new tools and ways of thinking, and digital parking solutions must adapt. In other words, flexibility can’t just be a buzzword—it’s a design philosophy that impacts users and parking providers. ◆
NATHAN WOULD is Senior Director of Account Management at ParkMobile, part of the EasyPark Group. He can be reached at nathan.would@easypark.net.
Smart ADVANCING
People-Centered Innovations in Parking and Mobility
By Eric Haggett, LEED Green Associate and Maria Irshad, CAPP, MPA
I N LATE 2022 , to help further the goals of the US DOT’s Smart City Challenge among members of the parking and mobility industry, IPMI assembled a task force of volunteers to identify ways in which IPMI can support the promotion of smart transportation for the benefit of member organizations and their parking, transportation, and mobility constituents.
The logical starting point for the task force was to evaluate various definitions for smart transportation and select one most applicable to parking and mobility professionals. IBM defines a smart city as “one that makes optimal use of all the interconnected information available to better understand and control its operations and optimize the use of limited resources.” Smart transportation has been defined as taking a data-driven approach to using existing and emerging technologies and innovations in mobility management to make moving around a city more convenient, cost-effective (for both the city and the individual), and safer.
While instructive, these definitions were viewed as limited and lacking breadth. Because of this, the Task Force expanded on its definition of smart transportation as follows:
Smart transportation means people-centered, problem-driven, technologyenabled solutions in mobility management that make the movement of people and goods across all modes more convenient, resource-efficient, safe, secure, and equitable.
Although technology has become indispensable in most people’s everyday lives, focusing on technology-enabled solutions to transportation issues risks neglecting, in our opinion, the most important component of the definition of smart transportation – people-centered.
The following article highlights three case studies from the newly released Smart Transportation for Mobility Practitioners guidebook where the organizations successfully advanced Smart Transportation in their communities while maintaining a people-centered focus.
City of Cologne, Germany—Mitigation of Congestion and Emissions
Approximately 800 parking spaces are available to the many inhabitants and visitors of one of Cologne’s liveliest districts, Nippes. The parking situation, however, is less than ideal, with drivers circling the area searching for available spaces. Through this pilot project, the City’s goals were to improve the quality of life of area residents and reduce emissions in the neighborhood by deploying an innovative parking management and digital signage system that reduces the time it takes for drivers to find an available parking space. This improves the visitor experience and can boost economic activity for local businesses.
While technology was the tool—the project’s main goal was to limit congestion to positively affect the entire community, including residents, visitors, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists
alike. There was no cost to users. All data was made available to the public on signage. Once the project was approved and funded, the City and local utility began engaging the broader community and educating drivers on how the system would work, including through an innovative use of YouTube (scan QR code to watch):
The primary goal of reducing carbon emissions was combined with the goal of limiting traffic congestion. Of course, limiting both the Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and vehicle minutes traveled had an enormous impact on the tons of carbon emitted and the efficiency of parking in the city. Driver convenience was improved significantly, while lower carbon emissions positively impacted everyone in the area—not just drivers. Additionally, limiting congestion on area streets helped reduce double-parking, allowing vehicle, bus, and bicycle traffic to use their portions of the right-ofway safely. Finally, less congestion made it easier for emergency vehicles to move through the area, allowing for quicker response times in the event of an incident.
Engaging stakeholders, including the local energy provider, was critical since the technology was deployed on light poles and required a full-scale collaboration. The energy provider’s direct involvement provided critical guidance ahead of the project. This includes their understanding of the electrical infrastructure, permitting requirements, lighting and power cycles, and where all timers and switches were located, etc.
Safety was also important to the project and a significant tieback to smart transportation. By limiting congestion, Cologne officials aimed to improve safety by freeing up lanes to help bus and bicycle traffic and making way for emergency vehicles.
By putting people first, the City of Cologne invested in technology to mitigate congestion, resulting in an improved parking experience and generating return customers for retail and restaurants.
Bethlehem Parking Authority—Parking Data and Technology for Smart Parking Planning
Operated by the Bethlehem Parking Authority (“BPA”), public parking in historic downtown Bethlehem, PA, is consistently highly utilized. As a result, the BPA was confronted with significant challenges when it came time to demolish and replace one of its largest parking structures, the Walnut Street Garage (“WSG”), which had reached the end of its useful life and no longer met the community’s needs effectively. Despite regular use of the structure by downtown residents, employees, and visitors, the massive structure was typically underutilized compared to other BPA facilities, and it occupied over an acre of prime downtown space, negatively impacting walkability. The BPA decided to replace the WSG with a smaller, more efficient structure that would help free up developable land in the heart of downtown instead of continuing to pour resources into maintaining the 50-year-old structure.
The decision to reduce the number of parking spaces in a new structure was based on data collected via parking field counts for the on and off-street parking in the study area and parking occupancy reports for the BPA’s garage that were regularly collected through the BPA’s PARCS portal to monitor actual parking utilization further. The PARCS portal provided 24/7 hourly occupancy data of permit and transient spaces in the two garages in the study area to assess daily and monthly peaks. The system collected occupancy data using LPR technology to scan license plates and record them in the PARCS database, allowing an understanding of when the permit and transient parkers utilized the facilities, the level of peak occupancy, and the peak utilization times for both weekdays and weekends. The data revealed that the two garages in the study were rarely over 50%60% occupied, except during major festivals or events in the city. Being that a reduction of parking spaces is typically not well-received by stakeholders, the BPA recognized that questions to be answered during the planning phase of this project included:
1. How should downtown stakeholders be engaged throughout the design and construction process to ensure the new facility
meets their needs and minimizes disruption for residents and businesses that depend on the WSG?
2. How could smart design and enhanced technology be employed in the new garage to minimize the resources needed to build and maintain the structure while maximizing the customer experience?
3. Could design elements enhance the experience of all downtown users, not just those driving and parking in the new garage?
4. How could equity be improved in Bethlehem’s downtown paid parking environment?
The BPA initiated stakeholder meetings over a year before the project started to ensure a thorough understanding of community concerns and to build support from the outset. These meetings addressed issues, refined the project, and secured input from downtown business associations, neighborhood groups, and elected officials. Public meetings were held regularly to openly discuss project details, address concerns, and collect resident feedback. These sessions were designed to be highly transparent, welcoming public participation and ensuring community voices were heard. Eventually, through outreach, great communication, and transparency, letters of support from downtown business
associations were obtained for the project, underscoring the importance of community involvement and engagement and the broad community backing.
As an example of collaboration and feedback resulting in change, the WSG is located within a Historic District, requiring approval from that District for any exterior changes. The District expressed concern about the proposed height of the new garage and the fact that BPA has eliminated one parking level. Reducing parking is often susceptible to negative feedback from businesses and residents. Still, the BPA provided usage data to demonstrate that right-sizing the garage would be in the community’s best interest.
As design and construction progress, the BPA’s commitment to keeping residents informed continues through the sharing of comprehensive updates about the project via the City’s website and social media, including information on alternative parking
locations and construction impacts for drivers and non-drivers alike.
Ultimately, the project to replace the WSG was undertaken to improve downtown and public parking accessibility, enhance economic growth, and optimize resource utilization. Recognizing the critical role technology would play in right-sizing the new garage, the BPA began upgrading its legacy equipment, services, and software two years before project commencement. This allowed the BPA to create a more efficient parking facility to serve the community better while freeing up valuable land for mixed-use development.
Technology was pivotal in achieving these goals, providing essential data on parking occupancy and utilization, guiding the rightsizing of the new garage, and informing dynamic parking pricing strategies to manage demand better. Integrating real-time occupancy data, digital signage, and online communication tools in the new facility will also improve the convenience and safety of parking for users.
To enhance the experience of all downtown users, sidewalks surrounding the facility will be widened, pedestrian-friendly streetscaping will be installed, and a public pocket park directly adjacent to the new garage will be enhanced.
Equity will be enhanced through this project with the implementation of demand-based pricing, creating more affordable parking options in less utilized zones. Additionally, the BPA will implement various payment options, allowing banked and unbanked customers equal access to the replacement garage.
University of Texas at Arlington—Expanding Campus Mobility Options
University of Texas at Arlington (“UTA”) initiated an autonomous shuttle pilot to enhance campus mobility while embracing innovative technology. The program aimed to provide a sustainable, efficient, and safe transportation solution that integrated seamlessly with the existing transit system. By implementing this project, UTA aimed to reduce traffic congestion, lower carbon emissions, and improve the overall transportation experience for students, staff, and visitors.
The Arlington RAPID (Rideshare, Automation, and Payment Integration Demonstration) project was the first to integrate Level 4 self-driving autonomous vehicles into an existing public transportation system with integrated free and paid fares. Paid for with a $1,698,558 million Federal Transit Administration grant matched by $1,181,770 million in local funds, the project lasted a total of 30 months, with 12 months focused on programming, mapping, testing, and education. Year 2 included a full 12-month deployment of the integrated services, data analysis, ridership
surveys, and service evaluation. The final six months wrapped up evaluations and shared research-based lessons learned in over 42 academic papers, 16 community events, and more than 20 professional presentations.
Equity was a cornerstone of the self-driving shuttle project. The initiative included accommodation for individuals with disabilities, ensuring that the shuttles were accessible and userfriendly. Additionally, efforts were made to ensure unbanked individuals could access the service without barriers, such as by allowing various payment options and not requiring digital payments exclusively. The Federal funding requirements emphasized inclusivity, and the project was designed to serve all community segments equitably.
During the project, UTA engaged the community through various channels to gather input and ensure the project met the needs of all stakeholders. These efforts included:
Concepts, Applications, and Case Studies
September 2024
● Public Meetings: Regularly scheduled meetings to inform and gather feedback from students, staff, and local residents.
● Educational Materials: Brochures, posters, and online resources were distributed to educate the community about the benefits and usage of selfdriving shuttles.
● Surveys: Conducted surveys to understand the community’s needs, preferences, and concerns.
● Stakeholder Outreach: Involved businesses, the disabled community, and local residents in the planning and implementation phases.
Feedback from stakeholders played a crucial role in refining the project. One notable issue reported by customers was the sound emitted by the onboard computer systems, which some found disruptive. To address this, UTA partnered with an engineering class and lab to develop and implement sound-dampening solutions. This collaboration significantly improved the acoustic environment inside the shuttles, enhancing passenger comfort. This example of addressing user feedback underscores the project’s commitment to continuous improvement based on real user experiences.
The project significantly improved customer convenience by offering a reliable, on-demand, and efficient mode of transportation. Features such as realtime tracking, estimated ETAs, easy access points, and short wait times made the shuttles convenient for getting around campus. Integrating existing transit systems ensured a seamless travel experience around
campus and through the extended downtown Arlington service zone, reducing wait times and improving overall access to campus.
Conclusion
Smart transportation is about finding solutions in mobility management that prioritize people’s needs, making the movement of individuals and goods across all modes of transportation more convenient, efficient, safe, secure, and fair. While technology plays a crucial role in modern transportation, it is essential not to overlook the fundamental principle of Smart Transportation, which is to be people-centered
Scan the QR Code now to download IPMI’s Smart Transportation for Mobility Practitioners guidebook.
ERIC HAGGETT, LEED GREEN
ASSOCIATE , is the Director of Planning for Walker Consultants and a member of the IPMI Smart Transportation Task Force. He can be reached at ehaggett@walkerconsultants.com
MARIA IRSHAD, CAPP, MPA , is the Deputy Director for the City of Houston, TX, and ParkHouston and the Chair-Elect of the IPMI Board of Directors. She can be reached at maria. irshad@houstontx.gov
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STATE & REGIONAL CALENDAR
2024 State & Regional Events Calendar
NOVEMBER 4–7
California Mobility and Parking Association (CMPA) Annual Conference & Tradeshow Costa Mesa, CA
NOVEMBER 15
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