Parking Planet

Name Dropping

It seems like I start most of my postings the same way:  "Jeez, it's been a long time since I posted anything."

Today is no exception.  It's actually been a year and a day since I put anything here.  A year!  I'm ashamed... I have now officially lost my bet to Peter L who said two months ago that I would not post anything before a year was up.  I will have to pay up next time we're together.

I know that more than a few readers (yes, unbelievable as that sounds, there are actually readers here, Maria I) indicated they were tired of seeing Albert Einstein and the Cargo Container essay.  "Please, Blake... post something new" they pleaded.

So today I'm posting something new.  It ain't much, but it's new.  Here's a few things that have been going on...

First off, I got a new job.  Actually I'm still with your best choice for parking technology, but I've stepped away from being a VP in favor of taking a Directorship in Product Management.  It was sort of weird taking a step down-and-sideways on the org-chart, but it's something that I thought I would like to try, and I volunteered to do so.  Mike S and Irena G allowed me to do so.

Oh, and I also passed my CAPP - the Certifed Administrator of Public Parking course through the IPI and the University of Virginia's School of Continuing and Professional Studies.  This was actually harder than I thought it would be - but thanks to Howard C , Mike K and Ken S (my last-minute study-mates) I was able to squeak by.  (Incidentally, my parents were thrilled about this.  They always said that I should have a backup plan in case my first career choice doesn't work out.  So now I can apply for a job in parking in case this whole technology fad doesn't pan out.)  You can see grad photos here if you like.

Speaking of the IPI, they invited me to participate in on the Technology Committee.  This has been a good experience for me and with the leadership of Richard E I think we're making a positive difference to the organization.

I got an e-mail from Doug H a little bit ago.  He's wondering what happened to my previous ramblings - er, essays.  Apparently the archiving on the blog doesn't provide options to go back as far as I need, so I'm going to have to come up with some other way to re-post the old content. [Updated: I've added a section that lists old essays in a plain format.]

So that's all I've got for now... sorry that it ain't much.  Do I have writer's block?  Or am I just lazy.  Hmmm... Got any ideas for a good technology in parking topic?

By the way, did you know that it's not uncommon for a blog site to last only one day.  Seriously.  I wonder if it still counts when you only post once annually?

The Cargo Container of the Parking Business

Albert Einstein is attributed with saying “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

He was probably talking about parking management.

Late last month I attended the World Parking Symposium bi-annual conference.  I’ve said this before: I really like this event because it’s almost purely academic in nature.  No trade show, no product pitches... just a bunch of “parking nerds” looking 2 and 5 and 10 years into the future of parking.

Some of these parking nerds (and I use that term in the most respectful way since I consider myself to be in that group) came a long way to talk about parking:  Australia, Japan, Israel, the Netherlands, Canada and the US.  Barbara Chance presented about parking in Kuwait which I found fascinating.

What was also interesting about all these presentations is a common thread of similar problems in each locale.  Aside from the political and legal wrangling over parking – and these influences are significant and cannot be ignored – one piece of evidence was obvious to me:  parking management suffers from an absence of good data from which to make decisions.

And that’s where Einstein’s quotation comes in.

You’re probably aware that as well as being a parking nerd some people think I’m also a computer nerd (another term I use most respectfully).  Data, in my humble opinion, is easy to come by.  Computers collect mountains of data, cheaply and accurately.  It happens in all information-based industries.  And the parking industry is no exception.

Believe it or not, parking systems are awash in data!  Access control, enforcement data, vehicle counts, permit sales, appeals, revenue controls... and yet as parking managers we don’t seem quite sure what to do with all that data.  Today’s parking management systems collect mountains of data.

Or perhaps I should say “Lots” of data.  That might be more appropriate for parking.  Parking?  Lots?  Get it?  <sigh>

Chicken Shoup for the Parking Soul

So back to my point… the first half of the quote:  Are we recording and measuring the right things?  I think the answer is no.

I’ve been reading Donald Shoup’s book The High Cost of Free Parking.  Or trying to anyway.  (Okay, I’ll admit that this is the third time that I’ve started reading it, but the first couple of times I was not able to get past the initial few chapters.  With apologies to Dr. Shoup – I find it really difficult to remain engaged in this tome – Shoup’s level of academia is beyond even me!  However there’s a glimmer of hope for me:  this time around I’m up to page 127 so I think I might actually get through it all!)

In the early chapters of the book Shoup talks directly and indirectly about measuring the demand for (free) parking in terms of parking spaces per 1000 square feet of building floor area, or parking spaces per employee, and the like.

These are the measures of modern day parking planning for the modern day planner.

But the poor souls who are doing this planning don’t have good data to work from.  The trip generation studies don’t seem to be providing the right answers, as is evident by the number of spaces required by law versus the number of spaces actually being demanded by parkers.  (At least that’s what I’ve discovered in the book so far; perhaps the remaining 600 pages will tell me otherwise and I’ll have to rewrite this entire essay.)

So we're not measuring the right things in parking.

Back to Einstein:  Is the stuff we should be measuring even measurable?

That's a harder question to answer.  I’m not sure, since I'm unclear on what we should be measuring.  But as I said earlier, we sure are measuring a lot of stuff.  Is there gold in them thar data that we're measuring?

Optimistically I believe that somewhere buried in that mountain of parking data there exists some very valuable and insightful statistic, some multi-dimensional correlation, some cause-and-effect that is not immediately obvious.  Eventually someone with some quality data-mining experience far stronger than mine will tease out these data relationships and we’ll all say “Aha!  It’s so obvious!  Why didn’t we think of that earlier?!”

However therein lay another problem... there’s no way that someone could mine this data in its current form.  The systems we use today don’t talk the same language!  The data that we could be mining is being stored in different places and different formats and the chances of anyone actually being able to mine it and discover great, valuable insight are, well, perhaps close to the odds of being hit by lightning.

So with our data all scattered about in different databases and stored in different formats, how can we go spelunking for that parking gold?

Some of the benchmarking initiatives that have been started by parking organizations are a step in the right direction.  Parking managers gather information from their various computer systems, tally their utility bills, and guess how much snow has fallen.  Sadly, I must admit a little skepticism here... collecting data in this manner is time consuming and fraught with error.  These are expensive ways to gather information that we’re not even sure is the right information to collect.  Especially when we already have mountains of data available to mine.

So here’s what I propose:  let's create a standard way to measure and collect data about parking operations.

Sounds simple, eh?

Having a set of clear standards has proven in other industries that they reduce costs, increase customer choice, improve safety, and ease the interoperability of systems.  The benefits of establishing such an infrastructure are huge!

Here are some quick examples off the top of my head:

• Standardizing the width of railroad train tracks allowed for vast economic expansion across America, leading to a railroad boom – and bust - but one that ultimately led to great benefit for consumers and businesses.
• The lowly cargo container has a long history, but standardization of common sealed containers that fit similarly onto a ship, rail-car, plane or truck vastly improved the logistics business, leading to worldwide economic benefit.
• Oh, and that little thing called the Internet, based on open and extensible standards like TCP, HTTP, and many, many others has led to a sea change of how business and consumers operate in the past few decades.  How did we ever survive without e-mail, MP3 players, videos, and perhaps most importantly, the web site that you’re reading now?

Still don’t believe me?  Here are some come counter-examples:

• Cellular phone service... In Europe and much of Asia they standardized on GSM technology, perhaps not technically the best, but at least a chosen standard.  Subsequently their adoption and use of cellular-based services became much further advanced than that of North America (because we’re still arguing over different standards and have to have separate cellular networks to support each technology).
• VHS versus Beta... This oft-cited example is a classic.  Nearly identical technologies wrapped in different formats led to significant consumer confusion, infighting amongst vendors, and stunting the growth of a nascent industry for a decade (I bet on Beta... and lost).  Sadly, get ready for round two of the video format wars:  this inane battle is now being repeated with HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray, two technologies promoted for storing high-definition content like movies.  I’m not planning to bet on this one but some say Blu-Ray looks it may be the early winner.

Heck, while we’re at it I'll complain about all the world’s standardization problems:  Metric versus Imperial measures... the global power grid (220V? 120V? 50Hz? 60 Hz?).  And let's not forget to establish a common, worldwide language to facilitate communication too.

Did somebody say Esperanto?

Okay, perhaps I’m going off on a tangent.  Let’s get back to parking.

So hopefully you’ll agree that standards are important.  I believe we can standards in parking too, regardless of the politics and legal issues of parking management.  Let's focus on the technology-based standards.

I think we should start with a common language for parking data management - let's all adopt it, including the all the vendors in the parking business too.

See, it's totally simple!

Am I crazy?  Is this Pollyanna-Meets-Parking? I’ll be the first one to point out that even in our own industry we can’t agree as to the best way to park our customers.

Take the example of a basic off-street surface lot.  How do we park thee?  Let me count the ways:  (1) Pay-by-space, (2) Pay-and-display, (3) Pay-by-cell, (4) In-lane cashier, (5) In-car meter, (6) Gate.  And this is a simple example... how can we possibly be expected to standardize our data management?

That is, of course, a key issue.  We don’t all manage our parking operations the same way, so why should the vendors who provide such myriad systems commit to working to a standard?

In fact, I’ll bet that vendors will probably agree that they want standards; it makes their jobs a little easier too.  The trouble is that they want their system to become the standard.  Unfortunately this will protract the battle for standards in parking data management.

That’s why we need to focus on open standards - ones that are vendor neutral.  We should try to seek data management standards that are based on industry best practices, those that are subject to public scrutiny, must be non-proprietary and should be extensible so that they can evolve and avoid becoming outdated.

Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, a lot the groundwork here has already been laid so this task may actually be easier than it first appears.  There’s a type of data standard called XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that already provides the framework.

XML is successfully being used in many industries.  It fits the bill for an open, non-proprietary standard method of sharing, managing, and describing data, and it can would work in parking too.

So how do we get this XML for parking?  It must be defined and derived from things that already exist, sort of like creating a new language based on other languages.  Creating a data definition language for parking is a big job – huge, actually – and will require participation from many vested parties (vendors, parking managers, industry associations, and academics) none of whom are likely see any personal profit from this venture.

It will be great for the parking industry, though.  This is the kind of infrastructural thing we need as a foundation for future development.  It’s the cargo container of the parking business!

So this is a call-to-arms!  C’mon everybody!  Who is with me?  Who wants to create a Park-XML?  <insert appropriate inspirational musical crescendo here; I’d also accept a slow-clap>

Personalized Parking

I know… I know.  It’s been many months since I last posted.  On two occasions I started to write essays to put here on the blog, but after writing I just didn’t feel that the topics were blogworthy.

However here’s one that I think you’ll like.  It’s about the personalization of parking.  It starts with some questions related to music:

Why is it that people complain about spending 99¢ to download a song from iTunes, but they’re willing to spend $2 on 15 seconds of that same song to use as a cell phone ringtone?  In other words, why would an otherwise sane individual spend twice as much for only a fraction of the song?

I think that the answer is personalization.  Your choice of ringtone is a statement about yourself, much like a getting tattoo or having pink hair.  People, in North America at least, are willing to spend their money on personalization from the many, many available choices that they have.

Parking is about choice too, but traditionally not about personalization.  For example downtown I can park short-term or long-term, on-street or off-street, surface or deck.  I even have the choice of parking illegally, but at the risk of getting cited.

There is growing evidence that the parking business, with the assistance of new technologies, is leading to more personalization rather than choice.

For several years Texas A&M University parking office has offered their parkers a choice of which access control credential to use in their lots.  TAMU actually has four that they use:  one is a magnetic stripe on the back of a hangtag, two are RFID transponders, and the last one is a student/staff ID card (mag-stripe on the back).

TAMU set up a web site where parkers, primarily students and staff members, could go online to My Parking Account and choose which of these four devices is “active” for parking.  So I can log on and activate my ID card today, and then tomorrow I can activate my transponder.  My choice is automatically “pushed” from the web site to the access control equipment.

While this is a step in the right direction it’s worth mentioning that TAMU is taking this to the next level: they have managed to tie the credential to the parker instead of the facility, meaning that parkers can now enter with one credential and exit with another – without having to visit the web site to activate a particular credential.

What’s interesting about this is that TAMU is assured that passback controls continue to operate properly even when a parker uses different credentials for entry and exit of a facility.  Loan your permit to a friend?  No problem… TAMU’s system lets the first parker in and bars the rest.

While TAMU may offer parkers some choice, the University of British Columbia parking office is offering even more in the way of personalization.

UBC offers a FlexPass credential which doubles as both a parking permit and an access control media.  It’s a permanent assignment, meaning that there’s no reissue cycle every year.  Once you’ve got your FlexPass it’s yours for life.

This “permanent credential” is not a new concept.

What makes UBC’s FlexPass innovative is the ability for parkers to choose where they want to park, when they want to park there, and pay only for the parking they’ve selected.  The FlexPass is valid in both garages and surface lots, and can be for as little as one-week or as long as forever (payroll deduction).  And the parker can make changes to the pass online, any time.

Now that’s parking personalization!

This is an example of what parkers want.  For the parking office it shifts the management focus from issuance – replaced by software business logic and pricing in the web pages – to auditing (restricting and enforcing access according to dynamic rules).

Such a level of parking personalization may not come from the parking industry per se, but rather from the transportation industry as a whole.  For example, in California the state is trending toward a mandated minimum required use of public transportation infrastructure.  California has already offered transit/vanpool subsidies and incentives for many years.

A technology-based solution of integrated public transit and parking is probably the only feasible way to meet this requirement.  Is it such a stretch to envision a combination transit-pass-and-parking-permit that allows one day of parking access for every two days you ride the bus?  This is yet another simple application for a smart card beyond the use of an electronic wallet.  Software and solution providers in parking may soon need to integrate more with transportation systems.

Anyway, when it comes to personalization I prefer the frivolous to the mandated.  So forget the law and just give me a personalized parking permit – let me choose where and when it’s valid (according to your business rules, of course) and then you price it accordingly based on what I pick.

And then the fun begins.  Let me personalize my permit.  When I order it (online, of course) let me upload a stylish picture of my pet or my kids to be printed on the back – just the same as post office lets you personalize stamps.  You keep your stuff on the front of the permit, but let me customize the back.  This is the parking permit equivalent of a ringtone, and I’ll gladly pay you a couple of extra bucks to have it my way!

CPA Award!

I'm very excited!  The Canadian Parking Association gave me an award yesterday!

During the parking luncheon yesterday at the annual conference in Edmonton, Alberta they presented me with the Ed Keate Award for outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the parking industry.

And the best part is that I didn’t even have to do anything differently than I’m already doing – talking about parking technology, writing about parking technology, and generally getting excited about parking technology.

During the award presentation I didn’t get a chance to make a speech. That’s probably a good thing 'cuz I was sort of speechless (a distinct rarity for me!). So <ahem, clearing throat> here’s my speech:

First of all, I’m honoured that the CPA would consider me for such an award. There are probably lots of people in parking who deserve recognition for their contributions – so I’m not sure how they picked me. Lottery perhaps?

In terms of acknowledgements I’m not sure that I could even name all the people who, in my past 14 years in parking, have helped make me successful at getting out the parking gospel. Specific acknowledgement would have to go to the following outstanding Canadian parking managers:

• Dave Hill who showed me how to think big (and bigger).
• Chris Stewart who taught me to revere the customer – or else!
• Rickie Pattenden, who helped me understand that parking theory and parking reality rarely meet.
• And finally the late Tom Arnold who showed me the lasting value of a positive word.

There are many, many more friends and customers (and customers who have become friends) who I’m not listing here – including all those south of the 49th parallel whom I work with on a regular basis – who are also deserving of credit.

So, thank you Canadian Parking Association, for considering me for this honour! I hope I can continue to offer the same level of contribution in the future.

When I get back home I'll scan the award and post a copy of it here.

[Updated 9/29/2006:  Here are some photos; click to enlarge.]

Innovation in Parking

Quick… what manufacturer shipped the most cameras last year?

Did you answer with Canon? You’d be wrong.

How about Kodak? Not even close.

Pentax? Olympus? Minolta? Nikon?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

C’mon, this should be easy. You know this company. They are worldwide. They shipped more than 100 million digital cameras last year.

Give up?

The answer is Nokia.

Yep, Nokia.  The cell phone company. The company that makes about a third of the world’s cell phones has, presumably by accident, the biggest provider of digital cameras too. (Heck, some of their phones sport two cameras – one for hi-res photos and another for low-res video).

So I thought to myself “How is it that a company who sets out to manufacture cell phones ends up becoming the world’s biggest shipper of cameras?”

And more importantly “How could this possibly relate to parking?”

Here’s how: Technology is notoriously able to upend an entire industry. Whether we’re talking about buggy whips or digital cameras the result is a new paradigm of business and products, often with a turnover of industry leadership.

I think this is just about to happen in parking. Here’s why.

I attended the IPI show a few weeks back. Since I was part of the CAPP program I wasn’t able to cruise the trade show floor like I normally do. I had to concentrate 12+ hours of exhibit time into about 2 hours..  Ouch!

Instead of rushing from booth to booth I simply asked a few folks what’s new this year. Where’s the cool technology to be found? What’s buzzworthy?

And at first they placated me with “Well, T2 Systems, of course.” (Shameless plug… though I would still argue that our stuff was definitely buzzworthy at the show this year).

So I replied “Okay, what stuff (other than T2) is worth checking out?” But the response that I received was that there really wasn’t much happening in terms of truly new, innovative products and services.

Strange. The IPI has what many are describing as its best trade show in years, and the products are the same old thing with just enhancements and add-ons?!

But then again, this is very typical for aging technology products.

Case in point: Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado are two books by Geoffrey Moore that describe customer adoption of technology products. I read them both a few years back. The typical adoption curve for technology-based products looks kind of like my pathetic rendition of a chart here.

The red line is the adoption of technology-based Product X. As sales are increasing the company is happy – the investment to build this product has paid off! But over time sales level off and then begin to drop. The product ages while newer products become available from the competition with more options and features.

And the folks in the company scratch their collective heads until some Marketing Dude jumps up and says “Let’s add some new features to it. It will be Improved!”

And the Improved Product X sells better, at least for a little while, until the company has to add yet another feature leading to New and Improved Product X. And so on, ad infinitum. In the graph those would be the pinkish-purplish lines trying to extend time and add to sales.

(Note that some Marketing Dudes also say “Let’s find a new geographical or adjacent market where Product X is heretofore unheard of and start selling there.”)

I know you’re very familiar with this tactic. Tide and Coca-Cola are experts at these product/brand extensions. Even potato chips have been new and improved: first chips, then stackable chips, then stackable chips with trivia questions and jokes printed on them.

We’re seeing a lot of this in parking too: aging products with add-on extensions rather than innovation of completely new products. And just like adding that camera to a cell phone, parking companies are coming up with ways to modify their products to extend the product's life.

One great example of this is the archaic single-space parking meter, trying to stay relevant in the 21st century.  What extensions are we seeing?  They’ve added digital timing and smart-card support. Pay-by-cell. And for the really adventurous, self-enforcement too (but if you do this remember to keep the device as ugly and utilitarian as possible).

Now I'm not saying that the IPI show this year excluded all innovation and invention. Far from it!  Several companies showed cool new stuff for the first time in 2006. Here’s a sampling of things that I thought were neat:

Peppercoin

One interesting thing was Peppercoin. Originally I only attended their booth to cuss them out (well they sent me no less than three unsolicited e-mail messages prior to the show, so I thought they deserved it) but it turns out that their product is sort of neat.

Basically what the Peppercoin folks do is provide a service to aggregate small credit card transactions together into one big transaction per month, so that the merchant (the parking office) can save on transaction charges. If a parker only parks once then there’s no savings, but two or more transactions in the month on the same credit card are grouped together and go through to the credit card company as one single transaction, saving on merchant fees.

For the parker, he or she receives a credit card statement like normal, and there's a single line item for their parking charge for the month. However there’s a transaction/reference number included: subsequently the parker can visit a web site and use this reference number to review the details of each individual parking payment that makes up the total transaction. Cool!

PayLock

I always knew PayLock as a company involved in vehicle immobilization (boots) and some creative ways to let the parker remove the boots themselves.  But it looks like they're reinventing themselves.  In their booth I finally saw the first working example of handheld enforcement for RFID permits.

This is not a new idea - RFID tags have existed in parking permits (decals, hangtags, transponders) for years – the difficulty has been in finding a handheld computer that reliably reads these tags and at the same time doesn’t empty your battery faster than a freshman downs a beer.

Nevertheless, PayLock demonstrated RFID tag reads using a handheld from Symbol Technologies with an RFID scanner. I tried it myself and it seemed to work pretty well under controlled conditions.

Aside: Personally, however, I’m still leery of RFID for enforcement purposes. Tags are still too expensive and the RFID industry is still arguing over standards.  This is a technology whose day will come. But in my opinion that day is not today.

Parking Stripe Advertising

A company called Parking Stripe Advertising was showing – well, how do you describe them? Instead of painting lines in your lot you lay down this adhesive “tape” on the ground where the lines go.

Except that it’s not tape, it’s some sort of plastic-vinyl-polymer that bonds to the ground, or concrete, or broken asphalt, or whatever surface you have. And it doesn’t fade in the sun or rip apart when tires squeal over it. It’s like parking lines made of magic.

The neatest thing about this was that this tape can have printed on it anything you want, and in full color. So the business model being toted at the show was advertising – the advertisers pay you to put their message on the lines of your lot. Basically you can stripe your lot for free, and continue to generate revenue afterwards.

And if you’re not into advertising then you can certainly imprint your own message on the tape: directions, logo, a friendly welcome, your URL, or whatever. (See their web site for samplers; check out the line stripe for the Hotel Monaco).

In my opinion this was the coolest new technology in parking this year. No, really, it was!

Boy, I sure have rambled on here. I’ll wrap this up…

In most industries there are turning points when new business models and paradigms take over from the old. Parking is no exception: but most interestingly I feel like we’re at that crux right now – that point-of-inflection where a sudden burst of re-invention about to happen and turn things upside-down.  That's very exciting.  And scary.

One last thought… remember Nokia, the phone-maker who sells plenty of cameras? Last year they also happened to build 46 million phones that can play digital music and MP3 tunes… narrowly beating out the mere 42 million iPods sold by Apple.  Very interesting indeed!

 

Trying a CAPP on for size

As noted in the comments from my last post (thanks Stan!) I will be attending the IPI Conference in Las Vegas next week.  Different from other years, however, I've joined the CAPP program.

So instead of attending 4 days of seminars, expo and carousing I'll be doing 5 days of seminars, expo and carousing.

Okay, that's not entirely true... the CAPP sessions are separate from the show's normal seminar program, starting Saturday and running through Wednesday from 8am to 5pm every day.  There are some breaks for the exposition and a few other events.

So as you can see it's actually pretty serious stuff.  I may actually have to limit some of the carousing.

In case you're wondering CAPP stands for Certified Administrator of Public Parking.  If you're not aware of CAPP, it's a semi-intense certification program for parking managers to ensure that they know all there is to know about parking management.  The University of Virginia accredits the course, and you actually get to use the letters C.A.P.P. after your name if you pass.  Since there's not much in our industry about parking certifications I definitely think this is a Good Thing.

Anyway, while I'm not really looking to make a career out of parking management (hah - too late for me!) I will say that I love these types of programs because it helps me understand customers much better.  This insight has huge value when building and architecting systems, and helps me overcome my occasional hubris in thinking that I know more about parking than our customers do.

It took me some research to figure out how CAPP works.  In my opinion the information posted on the IPI web site wasn't perfectly clear and I had to piece it together from various documents.  Here's a much more abbreviated rendition:

• You require 100 points to be eligible to write the final exam and pass the program.
• You get points for attending classes, conferences, giving presentations, and writing articles.  For example, an IPI conference gets you 20 points while attending an IPI sponsored 2-day seminar gets you 7.5 points.
• You start with some number of points assigned to you by a review board.  You have to write them and describe your parking experience, education, past attendances, and other parking-related activities.  This group of Supreme Parking Beings then determines how many points you start with.  (Obviously the more points you start with the less you need to complete the program - they gave me 46 points to start, which was awesome because if they gave me too few I wouldn't have even bothered to complete the program).
• Once you've passed the course you still need to gain a few points periodically to keep your certification active.

There are some fees along the way but these are minor - the bulk of the expense for me (and likely most people) is the travel cost associated with attending events to get points.  Incidentally, the certification administrator at IPI is Lauri Chudoba whom I haven't met yet in person but has been extremely helpful (and pleasant!) in e-mail correspondence.

If all goes according to plan I should be able to write the final exam after the 2007 IPI Conference in Tampa.  As my CAPP experience progresses I'll keep you posted.

So, that's it.  Next week should be really busy starting Saturday.  I'm looking forward to meeting my CAPP comrades, networking, learning a few new things, and generally enjoying the show. See you there (I'll be the guy in the I'm blogging this tee-shirt).

Hamsterdam

Last week I returned home from Intertraffic 2006.  I’d never been there before.  If you’re a parking junkie like me then I could only describe this expo as the Disneyworld of Parking, held every two years in Amsterdam.  Perhaps that makes it more Euro-Disney instead, except with more attendees.

Sometimes when I travel my kids ask where I’m going.  And they quickly lose interest when I drag out the map or globe to show them.  So this is the conversation we had:

Kid 1:  “Where are you going?”
Me:  “It’s a place called Amsterdam.”
Kid 1:  “Hamsterdam?”
Me:  “No, Amsterdam.”
Kid 2:  “Is that like a Beaver Dam?”
Me:  “Umm, well, they have lots of water and dams there.”
Kid 1:  “Is Hamsterdam where hamsters were invented?”
Me:  “I don’t think so.”
Kid 2:  “Dam is a bad word you know.  You shouldn’t say it.”
Me:  “That’s right.”

But I digress… back to Intertraffic…

First of all, it’s overwhelmingly huge.  It’s like six IPI tradeshows all at once.  The expo runs for 4 days, and in that time there’s no possible way to see everything.  I planned my booth-visitation-route in meticulous detail and still barely managed to get through it all.

Intertraffic also runs some presentations concurrently with the show; I caught only a couple of these but the real draw here is the expo, not the sessions.

Parking is actually just a portion of the show, maybe around 35%.  The rest is traffic-related stuff.  I checked out some cool traffic things but the truth is that the parking booths alone took the majority of my time.

So what about the cool new technology in parking?

It’s a bit of a mixed bag.  I’m afraid to say that I saw very little that would qualify as cool new technology.  There’s a lot of technology, some cool, but little new.

Pay and Display, Pay by Space

One of the biggest segments at the show was Pay & Display devices.  It seems like everyone had one.  They’re all online and connected nowadays – the age of batch operations seems to have given way to real-time remote transactions – and they’re all basically variations on the same theme.  I actually asked one vendor what makes his equipment different than the others.  He looked at me funny.  I clarified:  “What compels a customer to purchase your equipment over the next guy?” I asked.  He wasn’t able to answer.  Perhaps he didn’t speak my language.

There was some innovation, however.  One device from Metric is used to register and pre-pay for London congestion charges and actually includes a pushbutton keyboard so the user can enter a license plate.  This was cool, and beats the snot out of using a numeric keyboard for text entry (if you’ve ever tried to send a text message with a typical cell-phone keypad, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

Most of the P&D devices are now offering remote, real-time monitoring as well.  Since the data is centralized at a server somewhere it’s also possible to use an Internet browser, either on a desktop or on a PDA, to get current information about paid and unpaid stalls.  This aids in knowing when the machines are offline, where your enforcement should be targeted, or when the machine is so full of cash it’s about to burst (okay, admittedly most of them are using real-time credit card authorization so there’s even less cash to worry about and the bursting isn't really a problem).

Finally, from a parker’s perspective there was also the option to “top up” the paid parking by going to any P&D station on the network and adding time to your current stall without zeroing out any remaining time that you have - this was done by entering a code from your previous P&D ticket.  Frankly, I could see this as being more valuable from your phone, but the logic is the same coming from a phone or coming from another P&D box – only the convenience of the location is different.

Vehicle Detection and Guidance

How do you know when there’s a car present?  Or where it’s going?  Most popular in the parking business has been the use of the induction loop (or just The Loop as it is best known).

Let’s talk about The Loop for a second.  It’s cheap – after all, we’re basically talking about a hunk of wire and a simple circuit board.  Installation is where the cost is… digging a groove into the concrete and having to maintain it.  Oh, and it’s pretty easy to trick the Loop with two cars tailgating so manufacturers invent tricks like recognizing “leading edge signals” and so forth.  For more info on how loops work check out this page.

Several other technical options are now available.  Unfortunately, from what I saw demonstrated, the price of the devices and/or installing them is going to exceed that of our friend The Loop.  Nevertheless there were some cool alternatives if you're willing to pay a little more.

One such alternative is the ultra-sonic sensor.  Just like bats and whales uses echolocation to judge distances, so does this sensor.  Mounted overhead (or sideways) it can very accurately measure the distance between itself and the ground, so it knows when something is present under the sensor.  And even cooler than this, when matched up with software from Nortech it can determine the type of vehicle it’s detecting, based on the pattern made as the vehicle drives up: cars tend to be low at the front, higher in the middle, then low at the back again; vans are sloped upward at the front and drop off quickly at the back.

Another possibility is the ultra-sensitive magneto-resistor from Banner.  This device, about half the size of a deck of cards, operates like a little magnetic antenna  detecting any metal in its radius.  You can adjust the sensitivity to ignore small metal things like bicycles, or crank it up to register every penny dropped on the ground.

I think the coolest of the bunch, however, was an RFID-based detector from Nedap.  The idea here is to know which parking stalls in your garage might be empty or full, so you put a little detector in each space.  (I envisioned that these detectors would talk to an RFID hub in the ceiling, each hub receiving a signal from 30 or 40 parking stalls - there’s a Canadian company working on something like this - but such was not the case here.)  Each coffee-cup-sized device mounted in a stall wirelessly passes its status on to it’s neighboring device one stall over, and so on down the aisle until the last device transmits to a brain that is hooked up to the network.  This daisy chain allows the occupancy of hundreds of stalls to be monitored with minimal wiring or power requirements, using the same principles of smart dust.  If you ask me, this registers pretty high on the cool technology scale!

Access Control

Generally I’ve been pretty down on the access control guys, with their dearth of innovation and claims that RS-422 serial communication is the only reliable way to communicate over a long distance.

The regular collection of access control vendors were at the show (I won’t cite them all here; it’s too long a list and I know I’ll miss one and get slagged for it).  I will say, however, that I sense an undercurrent of excitement and energy in access control systems that hasn’t been present for many years.

TCP/IP communications – used for reliable Internet communications for, oh, only the last 35 years – is becoming the standard for access control equipment as well.  It's about time.  Gates talk IP.  Readers talk IP.  Pay-on-foot stations talk IP.  Even the intercoms are using Voice over IP now, with one company having the forethought to create a registered trademark using this technology over an intercom.

The devices themselves are also getting cooler.  Today’s access control system manages gates, but has the capability of running bollards, fences, doors, and myriad other devices that are well beyond the scope of parking.

The credential used for parking is also evolving.  It’s not about yet-another-card-in-your-wallet-or-device-in-your-car but rather using a device of your choosing as your access credential.  One promising technology is Near Field Communications, a short range device built into some newer cell-phones and PDAs.

So what differentiates one access control company from the next?  I can think of a few examples from the show:  Hardware reliability is a must.  Modular design.  Having a clear vision for the future.  Fashionable equipment (I’ll specifically give props to SkiData on this one).  And customer service… yes, even the access control manufacturers are starting to realize that it’s the end-user - not the distributor – that is their ultimate consumer.

License Plate Recognition

This is one technology that just can’t seem to get its act together.  It’s a horribly inefficient, expensive, accuracy-challenged way to identify a car.  You’d only use it when dealing with transient parking (admittedly a very large piece of the parking puzzle for most of us) because once you have a registered parker you’re going to encourage them to adopt a permit, RFID tag, or some other easier-to-detect media.

For those of you uninformed about LPR, it basically means taking an image of a license plate and converting it to understandable text.  Humans easily convert images to text – heck, we do it for fun when trying to decipher a particularly cryptic personalized plate – but computers struggle with the simple task of converting images to text.  Half the time the computer can’t even differentiate between the license plate and a bumper sticker!

In Europe it’s easier to do LPR than in North America.  The license plates tend to be less muddled with background images and odd-ball character sizes and directions, so LPR provides higher recognition rates there.  Oh, and the national registries of plates, rather than at the state or municipal level also helps keep consistency there, choosing colors that are complementary (black on orange) or providing reflective coating on only the characters.

I spoke with no less than six different companies using LPR (also ALPR, as in Automated) with various algorithms and capabilities for plate recognition.  They all said that the hardware – not the software – is the key to getting a successful recognition.  Many of them recommended using multiple images (color and infrared) to get the best initial image.

Nevertheless, in the relationship between transient parkers and parking proprietors, I think demand for LPR solutions (handheld-based, access control based) will continue to grow.  Successful recognition rates will creep up slowly as newer algorithms and more computing intelligence is thrown at the problem.  And then eventually when all vehicles and/or plates offer built-in computer readable tagging, this will all become moot.

Conclusion

If you’re still reading – whew, thanks for hanging in there - then you’ve learned about some of the more interesting things I found at the show.

Other, less neat parking discoveries that I investigated:

• handheld computers (nothing new here)
• barriers (snooze)
• paper products (double-snooze!)
• automated garages (rare)
• facility management companies (yecch)
• various hardware components (keypads and readers and card swipes, oh my!)
• single space meters (apparently they’re self-enforcing now)

I was talking to a German visitor at the show about his opinion of the expo.  He said it was his fourth time to Intertraffic, and that innovation seems to alternate between shows, as if there’s a two year cycle for new products.  Unfortunately this year seemed to be the “off” year.  Interesting… if his assertion holds true then I’m definitely looking forward to Intertraffic 2008 in Hamsterdam.

P.S.  If you're wondering about my non-work time:  I did visit the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum (big thanks to Sandra and Tom for spending the day with me!), checked out a real-live working windmill.  And before you ask:  Yes, I walked through the red-light district at night.  And and also stuck my head into one of the more interesting "coffee shops" - but I swear I never inhaled!  ;-)

Parking... Less Seriously!

Just a collection of a few short items today… nothing too heavy for you.

My new job

In the parking business there are very few companies that make a formal venture into product and industry research.  I am extremely fortunate that T2 is making this investment.

Huh?

Okay… here’s why.

I have a new job!  Woohoo!  I’m still with T2 Systems but I have a new role with the company.

Formerly as VP of Research and Development I led the R&D efforts for the company.  We’ve experienced significant growth in the last year with a huge focus on the “D” and not so much on the “R”.  So I’ve relinquished my Development role, handing it off my second-in-command, Laura Paterson (she’s far better at the management piece than me).

So now my focus is now primarily related to Research.  I hope to add value to T2 and our customers by looking strategically at the trends in both technology and parking, and then try to figure out ways for T2 to create parking products that apply those technologies in anticipation of customer needs a year or three out.  This has always been a component of my job, but now it’s the primary role.
I think I’m going to like this new role.  Thanks, T2!

That Elusive Book

I was complaining in my last article about how difficult it was to locate a copy of Donald Shoup’s parking tome “The High Cost of Free Parking”.  Apparently the book is on back-order everywhere.
After waiting two months and hearing absolutely nothing from the University of Chicago Press  I canceled my order with them (can you believe that I actually had to phone them: they let you order online but have no online order management?!).

Anyway, I returned to Amazon and found a few used copies of the book available for sale.  I bought one for $55, nearly the full price.  I had it shipped to our Indianapolis office where I’ll pick it up next time I’m in town.

So that’s the latest chapter of my book saga.  I'll keep you posted.

Online parking games

Now for some fun stuff.

Computer games are big, big business.  Sales of video games, game consoles, and online gaming subscriptions have grown and grown.  Some folks now claim that the computer game industry has actually exceeded that of Hollywood movies.
But there are also plenty of free online games that don’t count in this total.

Why would I even mention this?

Because some of those games involve parking!

Parking games.

Awesome!

So in the interest of wasting your valuable time check out the new links to the left:  I have searched far and wide across the vast realm of the Web just for you.  These games are all free, found online, and involve some form of parking.  Note that these require a free Adobe/Macromedia Flash plug-in for your browser in order to play.

(If you know of any other online parking games let me know or post 'em in the comments below).

Enjoy playing.  Oh, and if your boss catches you playing parking games at work... do like me:  claim that it's valuable Research. ;-)

Parking... Seriously!

Once again I’ve been remiss in my blogging duties!  In no particular order here is a collection of thoughts, tales, and schlock of the past few months…

Where did my previous blogs/essays go?

I don't know.  My blogging service provider had some sort of a crash a few weeks back and now those posts are gone.  I'll figure this out and get back to you... [Updated:  Apparently the recent posts have become "Archives".  I've added a link to the right in case you're looking for previous essays.]

Parking Pork

I was chatting the other day with my cousin, Gord.  Technically he’s my cousin once removed by marriage but that’s not important.  We were reminiscing.

Gord is pig farmer.  He has been since I can remember.

Gord has a hundreds of mama and papa pigs and thousands of piglets in several barns.  He is required to keep very accurate historical records of breeding and feeding and weaning and farrowing, particularly in case of any sort of disease outbreak.  Basically if one of these squealers as much as sneezes then Gord needs to know about it.

So flash back to around 1988 when I wrote a computer program that I would consider to be my first attempt at commercial software development.  It was called “PigTrak”.  Gord used it for many years.
Here’s basically how PigTrak worked.  Every pig has a tag in its ear and every tag has a different number.  Some pigs got two tags because they’d eat their first tag.  As the pigs are moved around from pen to pen and barn to barn the software was designed to keep track of where they are, what they’re doing, which other porkers they’re doing it with.  (I think they now use tattoos instead of tags).

And as Gord and I were chatting I realized that this was the pre-cursor to my parking career.  If you think of these pig-tags as license plates then you’re just parking them in different stalls (pens) and different lots (barns).  Okay, perhaps that’s a little simplistic but that’s what I thought of during our trip down memory lane.  Seriously!

(Oh, in case you’re wondering, I provided plenty of PigTrak demos and never sold a single copy.  I gave up my vision of becoming the King of Pig Software after about a year of trying.  But if you’re thinking about getting into the pig tracking software business the domain name www.pigtrak.com is still available!)

No Shoup For You!

If the parking industry were Hollywood then Donald Shoup would have to be considered a celebrity.

In case you’re not familiar with Dr. Shoup, he’s a professor at UCLA and has published numerous papers and even a book discussing why parking prices are so far out of whack with reality.  His most recent book is called The High Cost of Free Parking.  I have been trying to get my hands on this book since October.

I really want to read this book.  I do.  Seriously!

First I went to Amazon.com which warned me that this was a limited publication and that their acquisition of the product might not be successful (the first time I’ve ever seen that happen).  Amazon e-mailed me several times indicating delays in attainment of the book and eventually had to cancel my order.

Then I tried to order it from the American Planning Association but their web site registration was so horribly messed up that I couldn’t even create an account to make the purchase.

Finally I ended up going to the University of Chicago Press where I was able to place an order, but even that was a few weeks ago and I’m getting worried that the book won’t show up.

(Aside:  Incidentally I had the fortune of meeting Dr. Shoup back at a parking symposium in Toronto in 2003.   With some time to kill a dozen of us parking junkies – including me – saw the movie The Delicate Art of Parking which was a little campy but nonetheless worth the price of admission.)

‘Tis the Season

The autumn months seems to be rife with travel – at least for me this year.  I attended several parking shows and participated in presentations or panels at a few.  If you saw me there then thanks for attending.  If you missed me then you didn’t spend enough time at the bar. ;-)

The National Parking Association show was at the end of September at the famous Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.  This was before my time, of course, but it’s still cool to be able to walk the halls where famous dead guys performed from time to time.  I participated in a panel with Derek Kiley, Keith Lynch, and Neil Podmore from WPS, SkiData, and Verrus respectively.  The topic was payment technologies for today and the future – I’ll talk more about this in a future essay.

The New York State Parking Association conference was a fun event.  I love the New Yorkers:  they are the most down-to-earth, call-‘em-like-you-see-‘em kinds of people.  If you’re not sure what I mean then fuggedaboutit.  At this show I also participated in a technology panel with Jeff Bernatovich from Ber-National Controls and Richard Easley from e-squared Engineering.  We each spent time responding to a variety of questions, though I think I went off on a tangent more than once.  But for the record I’d like to say that the Recording Industry of Association of America is not evil despite what I might have implied during my speech.

The Canadian Parking Association conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario was really good this year.  Great sessions, lots of booth traffic, and a cordial group of attendees all made for a very good show, eh?  I didn’t present this year but will be submitting something for next year’s show and I hope they’ll offer the opportunity to speak.

Saving the best for last was the T2 Systems Annual User Group Conference (okay, perhaps I’m a wee bit biased in my opinion here).  With 260 attendees I think that this conference has become something like the third or fourth largest parking conference in North America.  Customers gave many of the presentations this year giving the event a true community feeling.  T2 announced some neat new projects and initiatives, and some moron even rode a unicycle.  Perhaps this gathering is my fave ‘cuz T2 customers are the coolest - shameless flattery, I know - but to me this event feels more like a family gathering than a parking show.  Seriously!

Anyhoo, before I get all weepy on you I’ll move on to the next topic.

Going into 2006

I predict that 2006 will be a big year for our industry.  Here are some thoughts for you to round things out in today’s blog:

• Big companies will start to gobble up little companies.  Both in technology and in parking, there continues to be too many small, under-capitalized companies providing similar competitive products and services.  This is a recipe for industry consolidation in both industries.
• The price of gas is still artificially low in the United States.  With US$3/gallon appearing for the first time this past year the psychological barrier of this “price ceiling” has been broken, so I’m pretty confident that in 2006 we’ll see it again.  With foreign demand for gas increasing significantly and few new reserves being found I think gas prices are in for a correction more akin to prices found in Europe.  (For the doomsday scenario visit LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net and learn about Hubbert’s Peak; the scary part is that this is rooted in science rather than idealistic dogma.)
• There will be a more-than-forecast demand for smaller and fuel efficient cars.  Consumers aren’t stupid – they have learned that the operating costs for a vehicle (particularly gas) is more significant than one-time factory/dealer discounts.  Old dogs GM and Ford are going to be hurtin’ while fuel-efficient (and operationally efficient) companies like Honda, Toyota and perhaps Nissan will be winners this coming year.  But this also means your parking audience is changing and you’ll need to cater to them in ways you haven’t before (see the next point).
• From what I’ve seen involving campus strategic plans there is little demand for new parking lots and big demand for parking decks and garages.  This trend will lead to higher parking prices (those decks are incredibly expensive on a per-stall basis!) and will drive a need for more sophisticated access control systems.  Higher prices lead to the need for more payment options for parkers.  And if you’re building one of those garages don’t forget to account for future demand for electrical outlets in stalls for those hybrid vehicles, and add high-speed networking at all device points (access controls, cashier booths, pay-on-foot stations, and even where you’re going to put your signs).
• Alternative transportation – or no transportation at all:  Parkers still love their cars and will continue to drive, but alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles will make a stronger mark in 2006.  Carpooling and busses will probably increase in significance for transit-based parking operations.  I’m also willing to bet that knowledge-based work will be done from home (i.e. no driving at all); many student courses are moving to online versions (or practically the entire campuses altogether, such as the University of Phoenix) if possible you should be thinking about who in your parking office can work from home on a semi-regular basis.

I’ll finish up by stating that in my opinion those of you who are on the front lines of parking – the parking managers and clerks and CSRs – get the raw end of the deal.  Your customers yell and complain and crap on you every day.  Somewhere around 80% of your problems are caused by 10% of your parkers.  But it’s not all bad… I hope in 2006 to be able to continue help you in the coming year by continuing to show up to your parking events and shows, and help you with solutions and products that focus on networking, best practices, and long-term solutions for all!  Happy New Year!

Online Parking Reservations

Shame on me!  It’s been almost two months since I wrote my last parking essay!  So here's a short article for you on the topic of online parking reservations.

It starts with my vacation last week.  I went camping for at the Pinery Provincial Park.

Why camping?  As a guy constantly immersed in technology camping is a great opportunity to get away from the laptop, Internet, cell phone and IM.  According to this research the typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction.

The Ontario Parks System is pretty good, but it’s very popular.  Unfortunately you now have to reserve your campsite at 7:01am exactly 5 months in advance of your camping date if you want to get a good campsite in one of the more popular parks.  That's when a site becomes available.  And that’s exactly what I did this year - and it was still a close call… thirty minutes later most of the reserve-able sites were booked!

Did I ever mention that camping is just like parking?  There are a fixed number of sites with a high demand curve.  And if you don’t reserve ahead of time then you take what you can get, usually the least desirable space furthest from the beach.

How does the camping industry manage their demand?  Recently they’ve raised prices (still well within reason for value received), they’ve also started charging cancellation fees and even cracking down on parkers – er, I mean campers – who make multi-week reservations but only show up for the weekend portions of them, leaving their sites empty during weekdays.

More interesting, perhaps, is the reservation system.  When I travel (camping or otherwise) I make virtually all of my arrangements online:  I book my plane tickets, reserve the hotel room, rent a car, and get my driving directions online.

But I’ve never reserved parking online.

And that’s strange because in the parking industry we generally agree that parking is a piece of a journey and not the final destination.  All of the other elements of my journey can be pre-arranged online, but not parking.

Finding parking online is not a challenge.  I most often turn to either MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps for driving directions and local maps.  The Yahoo! site is particularly cool because they offer a SmartView feature to superimpose features like hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, ATMs, and even parking right on top of the map you’re viewing.

This sample map of downtown Indianapolis shows nineteen parking lots.  But I can’t reserve parking at any of these locations.

In fact, it’s no easy task to find any place where you can reserve parking online.

According to a Google search for online parking reservation there are only a few dozen sites offering online parking reservations, and most of these are airports.

The Park’n Fly Network has a system akin to a hotel reservation.  And the ParkingAccess.com site helps you shop and compare parking at different locations around an airport.

But what about when I’m driving around in a foreign city?  I could find only two web sites:  Icon Parking gets you a space in Manhattan, while ClickAndPark.com gets you a space at your parking event.  Notably I can’t vouch for either of these sites.  Looking through the ClickAndPark.com site I tried 15 or so combinations of dates and locations, and I couldn’t find a single event listed.

There’s definitely an opportunity here for brand-building from a large parking operator to connect the online parking map with online reservations.

And when that day comes I’ll rejoice.  And then I’ll start to ask for two more things:

1. Before I arrive at the airport give me the ability to print my parking pass at home so that I hold a reservation well in advance of my arrival.  (The airlines already offer this with a home-printed boarding pass; parking can’t be that much more difficult!)
2. While I’m traveling provide me with the ability to see real-time parking availability at each of these locations, along with shop-and-compare pricing.

We obviously still have quite a way to go before we realize this vision.  Nevertheless I’m convinced that it’s coming.  The travel industry has been turned upside-down by cheaper, more convenient self-service over the Internet.

And I hope that parking won’t be far behind.