I’m traveling in DC and had dinner last night with Dale Denda, resident parking research scholar at the Parking Market Research Company. The talk was wide ranging, but seemed to focus on two areas. First, his area of expertise — garage construction, and Second the new wave of on street business that has hit the manufacturers.
Dale says that his research shows that there are a record breaking number of new garage construction projects in various stages of development. It holds that his prediction of three years ago that if the stock market stays above 10,000 and Osama keeps his bombs out of Times Square, parking and garage construction will flourish. The economy is booming, and so are new garage projects.
He does caution, that he sees a lot of projects "dropping out" but the number of new starts far outweigh the failures.
As for On street – we discussed the booming pay and display industry. If the IPI show was any indication, it is "over the top." For those who didn’t attend, the show was a grand success for on street purveyors. Their booths were jammed. The off street guys were playing Maytag Repairmen.
Pay and display, alternative payment methods (cell phone, credit card etc) and citation management systems were everywhere and of great interest. I expect the same reaction in Baltimore next month. lots of action from cities and universities…
Don’t sell the revenue control group short, however…Remember the first part of this blog entry — lots of new garages mean lots of new revenue control systems. And most of them will be Pay on foot.
Later
J
