/ Propark Mobility’s Luis Garcia to Lead University, Campus, Municipality, and Stadium Initiatives PROPARK MOBILITY announced that Luis Garcia, senior vice president of mobility for the company’s mobility sector, will now lead its university, corporate campus, municipality, and stadium divisions. “For more than a decade, Luis has contributed to Propark’s growth across a variety of verticals on the West Coast,” says Rick DiPietro, president of Propark. “Even amidst one of the most challenging economic times in our country, he has driven growth within the mobility sector, making us confident that, under his leadership, our university, corporate campus, municipality, and stadium divisions will continue to thrive.” Throughout his tenure at Propark, Garcia has been a leader of the company’s mobility initiatives, previously implementing a suite of mobility programs at Google’s Corporate Headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. In his first year as
senior vice president of operations, he developed Propark’s business model to respond to the changing landscape of the parking industry. Now, Garcia will leverage his mobility expertise and operations experience to further enhance services within Propark’s university, campus, municipality, and stadium divisions. “Luis has been a valuable Propark team member since day one,” remarks Propark CEO John Schmid. “His vision has been integral to our success in the mobility sector. We look forward to seeing what he will accomplish for Propark in these additional areas.” Garcia joined Propark as an account manager more than 10 years ago, before growing within the company. Prior to his current role, he most recently served as senior vice president of Propark’s West Region, where he developed an existing small portfolio of assets to 60 properties.
The Catholic University of America Launches Flowbird App For Campus Parking
SHUTTERSTOCK / BUMBLE DEE
FLOWBIRD GROUP , a global leader in smart city and campus solutions, has announced that it has launched the Flowbird app on the campus of The Catholic University of America. Located in Washington, DC, Catholic University faces the same challenges many schools face, especially schools set in urban areas. With a limited parking supply, and a parking population with varied needs, the university looked to Flowbird to help manage daily parking with a simple, touchless solution—the Flowbird mobile app. Catholic University started working with Flowbird several years ago when multi-space parking kiosks were installed in three parking locations. In 2020, university staff decided to add mobile payments as an additional way to pay for parking in kiosk locations and the app was launched for the start of the Spring 2021 semester. Additionally, the Flowbird app was rolled out into additional parking areas to bring better parking controls and automation to those locations. The Flowbird app, available on the App Store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android, provides users with a mapbased user interface, making it simple for users to select their parking location without man-
ually inputting a zone code or scanning a QR code. Parkers can get a reminder notification when their time is about to expire and they can extend their time right from their mobile device. Walking directions back to their original parking location is also a handy feature of the app. A key aspect of the Flowbird solution that has been adopted by the university is the use of validation codes for campus visitors that are taking a university tour. University staff create the electronic validations using Flowbird’s back-office management suite, and provide the codes to the visitors. Upon arrival on campus, the visitor opens the Flowbird app, enters the validation code, and they are on their way. Another important functionality that Flowbird delivers to the university is the integration of all kiosk payments and Flowbird app payments in the same reporting module. This provides university staff the ability to view all parking activity in one place, broken down by payment method. “We are very excited to launch the Flowbird app on campus,” said J. Charles Lavallee, associate director of transportation and parking services. “As more and more people are returning to campus, we are seeing the Flowbird app as an extremely convenient and beneficial tool.” PARKING-MOBILITY.ORG / MAY 2021 / PARKING & MOBILITY 43
