Parking September 2010 - 15

Zack Harmeyer will be among the presenters at NPA's 59th Annual Convention and Exposition, to be held Oct. 11–14 in Boston. Harmeyer, along with Liz Simmons of Simmons Consulting, will present "Leveraging Technology to Provide Stellar Customer Service" on Oct. 14. For more information, go to www.npapark.org and click on "Events."
Carpooling, outside of employer-based programs, is also gaining momentum through the use of existing Web and mobile technologies. The key to successful online carpooling is to get a sufficiently large pool of like-minded individuals working toward “connecting” for sharing rides. Some websites like Zimride, Carpool.ca, and AlterNetRides provide matching services using a social network type of mechanism. The juggernaut of social networking is Facebook, claiming more than 400 million users worldwide— and it continues to grow. Facebook also estimates that 25 percent of its users access the site through a mobile device, possibly making it a perfect platform to address a mobile population seeking carpool opportunities. Local and regional Facebook groups naturally collect “followers” who could be leveraged for carpool matching (something that Zimride is attempting). Universities and municipalities are constantly competing with the goal to get people to their locations while managing a finite space for vehicle parking. For their operations, carpooling is one of the most important aspects of alternative transportation and TDM programs they use to perform this balancing act. While providing benefits similar to that of private businesses, universities and municipalities also provide numerous other incentives for participation. This seems unnatural, though—the unwritten rule of parking management is to be profitable, and yet these are tools that reduce the number of paid parking trips! Nevertheless, additional incentives include reduced permit costs, reserved parking spaces closer to a destination, cash/coupons/vouchers, as well as free (or close to it) access to other alternative transportation. Carpool programs are not without problems for university and municipal operations. Enforcement of location specific carpool rules can be difficult— and unfortunately the rules are not always simple. Enforcement is a must, but it’s also labor intensive and costly. Handheld computers are very helpful here in cross-referencing carpool permits to valid plates, and even for detecting abuse of privileges of permit overuse or too many registered vehicles. For access-controlled (gated) facilities, the operation’s parking access system should be able to offer usage of alternative access credentials and enforce passback based on a group of IDs. For example, multiple people/vehicles could have their own permits/credentials and all of these credentials are tied back to a “master carpool permit,” enabling strong passback controls and monitoring. Other creative solutions include use of “permitless” gates depending exclusively on license plate recognition, where multiple plates are registered as a carpool group. Alternately, for a profit-focused parking operation, carpool programs may or may not have a serious revenue impact in the short term. The overall impact of the vehicle reduction depends on location and geographical traffic, as well as other TDM initiatives. On the macro level, for the business of making money in parking, carpool programs negatively affect the size of a parking operation’s client base. And as a business, a reduction of your customer base is a scary notion indeed. Carpooling doesn’t have to be a negative for parking managers. It provides a way for parkers to opt-in without having an overwhelming amount of legislation driving their behavior. And carpool programs can be altered to make them less desirable (or more) depending on the pace at which they’re impacting demand. Technology is available to assist parking managers in enforcement and control, while social networks are giving parkers the freedom to self-organize their carpool buddies. Overall, carpooling is a viable option for both parking managers and parkers alike. 
Zack Harmeyer is a parking manager-turned-product manager at T2 Systems. He can be reached at zharmeyer@T2systems.com.

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Parking September 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Parking September 2010