Year: 2019

Parking Today is taking a breather for the holiday season. Although we are officially at work, our response may be a tad slower than normal.

Focus – That’s my issue – I’m having a difficult time focusing on work. This time of year is a time of change with distractions

This time of year, I begin to think about the future. I’m not sure why, I can barely deal with today, but its probably due

When I spoke at a recent regional parking event, I was riffing on the money involved in municipal parking – I told the story of

Rick Seibert, parking guru at the city of Charlottesville, VA, reached out to the parking community and asked advice on building a new garage. He

It is amazing. Day after tomorrow is Thanksgiving. And a month later we will be into 2020. Plans for the holidays are beginning to gel,

Do you spend time thinking about things? Do you consider what you are going to eat days from now? Do you think about people and

Over on Parknews Astrid has posted an article titled: Where to park at or near LAX at the holidays and why a private lot may

Veteran’s day is a time to remember and say thank you. Current and former members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard

A friend who attended the NPA event in Florida last week noted that the focus seemed to be on technology as it fits ‘frictionless’ parking

The Big Trade Show Season (in parking) is over and its time to look forward to 2020. The Premiere (read that first) event of national

I have been in a quandry these past few weeks. My car has turned 15 and has 170K on the clock. Traditionally its well past

I have been musing on the issue of charging stations and how parking space owners are controlling their use. Salt Lake City is reaching out

I made the decision last weekend not to attend the NPA event this week in Orlando. I’ll miss seeing old friends and making new ones,

We have finalized the November issue of Parking Today. It’s the Veterans in Parking issue. Todd Tucker has edited the articles and all but four

Chicago is considering slapping a “congestion charge” on Uber and Lyft. You can read all about it over at Parknews.biz. Cities in Europe, London particularly,

I live in the belly of the beast. LAX is a traffic disaster and although the airport is working to alleviate the problem, it will

As autonomous vehicles take to the streets in test after test, the limitations of the current technology comes to the fore. In about 225 locations

We have an article on Parknews.biz about irate owners of off airport parking facilities entering into litigation against the owners of the three major airports

If you log on to Parknews.biz you will find an article from the Old Gray Lady (The New York Times) about high end parking garages

Thus Chicago Parking guru John Hammerschlag describes the parking marketplace in Chicago. He goes on “It’s a much more competitive business than it once was.”

  Actually, this sign is fairly clear. Can’t park from 11-1 on Friday for Street Cleaning. 2 hour parking 8 to 5 Monday – Saturday

Shelly came to the PT offices for a meeting this week. When it was over, we asked for her parking ticket so we could validate.

Do inanimate objects take on a life of their own? If not, why does your car run better after a car wash? Doesn’t you cell

I have written before about how where one lives and works can affect how they see the world. Nothing can exemplify this more than Silicon

There is a discussion going on over at the IPMI message board concerning bike lanes and how to keep people from parking there are blocking

It’s Labor Day Weekend. The traditional end of summer. Time for BBQs, a quick last mini vacation, and to prepare for the year to come.

Over at Power 2 Go, Keith Jones expresses concern that mergers and acquisitions and the influx of venture capital money into the parking operations world

We receive news releases daily. More and more they are using complex terms in an effort, I think, to obfuscate. See I did it right

Help Wanted –Advertising Sales Parking Today is increasing its extremely successful sales program. We are seeking an experienced salesperson to work with our Advertising Sales

The following post will be reprinted in the September issue of Parking Today. My technological epiphany can be quantified like this: Five hours on the

I read  half a dozen or so blogs each day. I realized today that they get stale. They say basically the same things over and

  PIE Keynote – David Zipper PIE 2020 is proud to welcome David Zipper as its Keynote. David is Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy

That headline is known as clickbait. You simply had to read this article, since the headline was so intriguing. By now, you realize that you

The blog below shows how regulation can run amuck. But does this mean that we should have no regulation at all? Ace’s Keith Jones writes

New York City, relying on input from transportation gurus, decided to instigate a program to cut down on double parking. They installed loading zones in

I asked that question at a seminar filled with on street parking managers and enforcement officers. After a lot of hemming and hawing, it came

About six months ago we coined the term “The Parking Experience.” Our goal was to convince an industry that really didn’t consider its customers. The

Farmer Smith and Farmer Brown decided to plant apricots this coming year. Both bought the best stock and duly watered and fertilized them. The trees

“With all the fake news going on, consumers believe that if a company invests in the printed word it’s more valuable. Whether it’s true or

Check this out: It’s a EV charging installation at a Wal Mart in Santa Clarita, CA. Do you see any problems here? It took a

“There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Wags from New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to Science Fiction Writer Robert Heinlein have used this

This year, the dog days of summer are officially July 12 – August 20. That’s when Sirius, the “Dog Star” rises just before the sun

Betcha thought Reno was a sleazy little town north of Las Vegas where you went to get a divorce. You would be WRONG! I spent

I received this from another thoughtful and bright parking pro. He was commenting on my piece about trying to communicate with the short blurbs on

I received the following from one of the brightest folks in the industry. She’s right, of course.  JVH If you’ve ever sat in on an

I have blatantly stolen that headline from Keith Jones over at Ace Parking and his Power 2 Go blog. You can read it all here.

Failure, or the fear of failure, can be disastrous. If we are so afraid to fail we never begin, the disaster may be larger than

Parking Today is changing the theme of our November to “Veterans in Parking.” Every article will be written by a veteran. The edition will be

A PEO in San Francisco ticketed a car for not being moved during street sweeping. The car had had all four wheels stolen. The owner

I read a piece over on parknews.biz about Parkvia and a new position they have filled called a ‘customer expert’.  Their goal is to bring

My piece yesterday about commoditization brought this response from rta: People do not go anywhere to park, they park because they are going somewhere.  What

Commoditization – the act of treating something as a mere commodity. I was speaking to senior member of the leadership of a major parking operator

The headline is clickbait – I really do give a damn. I give a damn about parking, enough that I want us to keep our

In the July and upcoming August issues of PT we have some tremendous articles on The Customer Experience.  Brian Wolff, Brandy Stanley, George Baker, Roamy

“Wow! He’s really Hard Core, Isn’t he”? That’s the response I got when I gave a five minute talk to the Parking Resource Forum held

Almost daily we receive a news release about the retirement of this person or that. These are people I have known for decades. We grew

Tiny Nevada City in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California is raising onstreet parking rates. The 3000 population city is unabashedly looking to increase revenues

When I wrote the piece below about “One size doesn’t fit all” I didn’t think it was one of my greatest efforts nor one that

There’s an article over on parknews.biz about automakers not wanting you to by cars. It’s rather interesting – The authors posit that with billions of

Headline over at parknews.biz:  Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It – The author goes on for 1500 words describing the

I completely understand when suppliers focus on their customers. But who are they? The people that buy parking control equipment and services are the operators,

Although they make it look easy, the technology companies that provide revenue control systems to parking garages perform difficult tasks in difficult environments. When a

Why does parking have such a bad reputation? I think it’s because nearly everyone EVERYONE in our industry talks about the business of parking but

Over at Reinventing Parking, Paul Barter lists a number of cities that are experimenting with demand based pricing. Read all about it here. The goal

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that

I just reread the post below and wondered why the parking operators at LAX don’t fix the problems themselves. There are at least a dozen

Our local airport has been listed as number 10 (10 being worst) on the list of crummy airports in the US. The reason – traffic

Here’s the headline: Florida Lawmakers Aim to Restrict Early Voting Locations Based on Parking Availability. You can read the entire article through the link on

SAN DIEGO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’S PARKING RESERVATIONS PLATFORM MARKS SUCCESSFUL FIRST YEAR  Chauntry’s Pre-Booking Platform V18 Used By 68,000 Travelers  San Diego, CA (June 27, 2019)—San

Park News editor Astrid is off in the jungles of Florida visiting her parents and celebrating her birthday. She has left Parknews in my incapable

Can you imagine – a list of 30 ways you can make on street parking fees more palatable to the public. Are there 30 ways?

Melbourne’s Elizabeth Taylor has written a fantastic piece for the online publication of Monash University which takes us through the maze of Joseph Conrad’s Heart

I’m sort of shooting in the dark here, and probably don’t have all the facts, so if anyone knows more and sees a problem with

David Zipper, writing over at CityLab, posits the following: There are a handful of policy phrases that reliably trigger outrage among urban mobility wonks. “Sharrow”

Now there’s a term I hadn’t seen. The concept is that a four-lane street or road be shrunk to two traffic lanes with the rest

The city of New York is considering installing electric vehicle charging stations at some on street locations. If your goal is to entice folks to

The school board in Jersey City, NJ, has decided to let people park on their school lots during times when the lot is unused. And

I’m in receipt of an article from the New York City Journal that chronicles the disaster that is the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, the

I have attended some seminars on parking this past week and have an observation: The higher someone is on the corporate/organizational ladder, the more esoteric

One of the members of the IPMI asked its forum for help in designing a sign to communicate its parking rules to its customers. They

“You can’t park illegally. I mean, you get a ticket, there’s something wrong there, and I’m asking people to just, y’know, respect the rules of

My comments on the city of Portland and Tony Jordan and a parking deck expansion brought a storm of comments on Twitter but little here

Yes, my comments below about Tony Jordan and Portland created a Twitter storm, well maybe a Twitter drizzle, and I found myself lambasted from as

In my blogging I often add a few throw away comments that get under the skin of some readers. I have been accused of being

The City of Portland, OR, is considering expanding an existing garage in one of its neighborhoods. It could add as many as 392 spaces to

Thinking about the problem in Koreatown I mentioned below, I wonder if there is an agenda here. Our betters at City Hall have decided that

I just read an article from the LA Times posted on Parknews titled “Want to Park in Koreatown? Get Ready for a Blood Sport. Read

When I left the army in 1970, we were told not to wear our uniforms in public. The odds were that we would be jeered,

I received an article from the United Parcel Service focusing on the curb. However within it were these sage words: Let’s talk enforcement – and

I have been musing about how cities can make parking more attractive to their citizens when I came across an article describing a new potential

The Big Bang Theory is no more. The last episode aired this past week. Everything appeared to be resolved in the lives of the seven

I’m in the parking business. People around me are complaining that the future is bleak. What with Uber/lyft, electric scooters and bikes, the entire ‘mobility’

The theme for PIE 2020 is The Parking Experience. How do we as an industry make the parking experience the best for our customers, the

I’m attending the Israeli Conference on Parking Traffic and Transportation being held next Wednesday in Jerusalem. Organizer Pini Cabessa has been kind enough to invite

These and like buzzwords are pervasive in our industry. Whether its at trade event seminars, on web sites, in blogs posts or articles in Parking

When Robot B9 spoke those words to Will in the ancient series Lost in Space he was warning his charge that trouble was ahead. Today

Parking Today Sales Director Marcy Sparrow has found another task on her plate. PT Publisher John Van Horn has named her to head the Parking

A federal court in the Midwest has ruled that chalking is no longer legal in five midwestern states. Read about it on parknews.biz. What the

Taxis have existed since the 1700s. They are ubiquitous in major cities around the world. Suddenly, they are being challenged by Uber and Lyft. Seemingly