Regular readers of this column know that a couple of things get my dander up. One is where “our betters” feel it is OK to increase taxes and do not consider the effect that increase has on the less fortunate among us.   The screaming headline here in California this

I took a quick trip that required air travel. I have a couple of comments.   First, air travel seems to be “back.” I took four flights, and every one was completely full. The days of stretching out and using that empty seat next to you are gone.   One

I opened PIE 2024 with the announcement of sale of Parking Today Media to Kevin Uhlenhaker.  I will let you read it here:   I have been asked to talk a bit about PT’s history.   Started with my father – a true renaissance man. He was a printer and

It is difficult to realize that as people age, their abilities in certain areas change. A friend pointed out that when running the Boston Marathon, to qualify at age 30 one has to run at a certain time, but at age 60, it is a different (longer) time. Those in

  The EV crumbling has begun. General Motors and Honda have pulled back their EV programs and cut drastically the number of such vehicles they are projecting to sell in the next few years. Toyota, which has been vocal since the beginning about the efficacy of EVs vs hybrids, are

January 2024   would have thought that a business transaction in the parking industry would involve the number $1.5 billion? What venture capitalist would consider dropping that kind of change to purchase a parking operator? It boggles the mind.   Yet, apparently, it has happened.   Metropolis has attracted the

Just what is “mobility”? The best answer I can get is that it’s the use of some way to get from Point A to Point B without using a privately owned vehicle. Consider: bus, bike, scooter, feet (walk), light rail, and metro.  They all get you from A to B

July, 2023 “Any damn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.” – Pete Seeger Social activist and folk singer hit the nail with his famous hammer with this one. How often do we encounter a ‘pitch’ from a company or individual and after it

June, 2023   For those of you who might have noticed that I haven’t been my normal self lately, I thought you deserved an explanation. Seventeen years ago I had a heart valve replaced. I was told at the time that the new valve would last between 15 and 20

May, 2023 I have been distracted with PIE and other issues, so I decided to look back a few years and rerun a few postings from the past – they seem to still work today. I have become so disheartened with the news and other programs on television that I simply

April, 2023 I was reading in the parking media about scooter parking and the use of scooters (Bird, Lime, etc). As you know, I live at ground zero in scooter usage, the west side of Los Angeles. I admit that I have seen a growth in scooter usage during the past

March, 2023   I have received a gazillion emails touting local health spas and online health programs. Get your body in shape for the new year. Yeah, right. Not that getting in shape isn’t a good idea, but aren’t we forgetting one part of our psyche? Our mind. What can we

February, 2023   Astrid Ambroziak, our Parknews.biz editor, reports that she is getting news every day that crime in parking, read that in garages and with PEOs in on the rise, up in some areas as much as 95 percent. What are we, as an industry, doing about it? It

January, 2023   For years, I have expressed concern about the ‘fixing’ of society’s ills. Our betters have a solution, that in most cases involves increasing the cost of something and the folks that take it in the shorts are the most financially challenged amongst us. Sean Williams in Los

From Point of View, December 2021 – I cannot improve on it. The phrase “In Hoc Anno Domini” refers to the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Every year, on Christmas Eve, the Wall Street Journal reprints an editorial under that title written for its pages in

I’m pulling together the October issue of PT and am humbled by the articles we have on hand. We reached out to organizations industry wide and received nearly 30 responses. The goal was to have a description of ‘leadership.’ In other words, “what makes a leader?” We gave them a

We are constantly harangued by those who know more than we do that the world’s problems relate back to parking. There is too much of it. It costs too much, or too little. It takes up space that could be put to better use. You know the rest. Nature has

I have just read for the fourth time an article published by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association titled “Parking in a Post Pandemic Economy.” I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the article was written at all. If you wish to read it, log on to Parknews.biz. We

From time to time I attempt a movie review. I will not in this case. There is no need. The public has spoken, as have the professional reviewers. This is one hell of a movie.  It’s a wild ride, but the underlying message is far too important to skip over.

Chase is launching a program to place EV charging at 50 of its branches across the fruited plain. They are partnering with EVgo and plan to expand the pilot program to an additional 400 branches by the end of the year. More power to them. Pun intended. Chase publications note

I will open this with a bit of crow eating. My buddy Tony in Portland has criticized me for using the term “our betters” in various articles I have written over the years. It is a facetious way to name the elites, the government officials, and those who run the media

Our Keynote speaker next month at PIE is an old and dear friend of mine, someone I knew when we both were new in parking, Cindy Campbell. I first met her in person when she was running the parking operation at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in California. She was

Recently, PT’s Creative Director Astrid and I spent an hour and a half with Michelle Horton, the Director of Parking and Transportation Services at the University of Nevada, Reno. This woman knows her stuff. Her job, as she sees it, is to do her best to make the university welcoming.

Bloomberg labs has published an article by Eric Jaffe on a study done by a bunch of Italian statisticians concerning folks’ preference to cars over other types of transit, even when it costs more to drive the car than take rapid transit or other types of transportation. Their theory is

I blasted through a headline over at Parknews.biz concerning parking at Trader Joe’s. It was, I thought, a ‘dog bites man’ story. After all, we all know that every Trader Joe’s is a small store with a large clientele, and a correspondingly small parking footprint. You know that if you drive

From my Blog, December 2020: The phrase “In Hoc Anno Domini” refers to the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Every year, on Christmas Eve, the Wall Street Journal reprints an editorial under that title written for its pages in 1949 by Vermont Royster. It doesn’t mention

Let’s start with a quick note – take the time to read Jeff Pinyot’s column on page 14 in this issue. It is perhaps the best thing he has ever written.  Sometimes, I think about right and wrong, yes and no, up and down, on and off, in and out.

Reading can be recreation, like watching TV. Except that when you watch TV, no mental activity is required. You simply sit and it washes over you. When you read a book, your eyes, your brain, and dare I say it, your very psyche are engaged. You are required to translate

I know, I know – I’m a contrarian. Someone says up, I say down. Someone says white, I say black. I get this from being right so many times. (No arrogance there). My contrarian roots got tickled by an article in the Wall Street Journal. Astrid grabbed it and the story

I have spoken to a number of people who have been vaccinated, and their experiences have been positive. Not just that they are now protected from the virus, but the people they met at the vaccination center were happy, positive, and as one colleague put it, high on Pfizer. Robyn and

I was in Las Vegas last month and the city was abuzz with the news that the World of Concrete would be held in early June at the city’s convention center. The in-person convention is expected to bring more than 50,000 people to the gambling mecca. The city’s mayor, the Nevada

Twenty-Five years seems to some like a long time, but for me it went by in the blink of an eye. Parking Today Volume One Number One was a little shaky. We knew little about layout, printing, and finding good content. Google was only a dream in Larry Page’s and

It was 1996. Bill Clinton was elected president. Gas was $1.22 a gallon. The Dow closed the year at 6,400. Mad Cow Disease was ravaging the UK. Prince Charles and Diana were divorced. Nintendo 64 and DVDs were launched in Japan. Gunmen attack in Scotland and Tasmania. The summer Olympics

There are two articles over on Parknews.biz that caught my eye. One has to do with “Parking Hunger Games,” the difficulty of finding on street parking in New York City, and the other commenting on how people are buying cars like mad so they will have a way to get

I hadn’t been on an airplane for nine months. For most, that doesn’t seem unusual, but checking my calendar for 2019, I was averaging two to three plane flights a month. The pandemic had put me on the ground.  I was reacting to news stories and empty parking lots at LAX.

The holidays shouldn’t be too difficult this year. What with politics, the virus, and our betters telling us not to celebrate, what could possibly go wrong? Here I am the day before Halloween (cancelled in Los Angeles, but going on, nevertheless) writing about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ah, the foibles of

I have been sitting here trying to figure out what to write. Normally, I am bubbling over with ideas to put down on paper, or planning the next interview, or making sure the sails of the good ship PT are properly furled and checking my calendar to be sure I have

Over on Parknews.biz, Astrid has posted an article from the The Atlantic Magazine. The article posits that millennials are buying cars. Yes, this group that shunned personal vehicles is buying them in very large numbers. Although the person quoted in the article (it’s actually a podcast interview where an Atlantic

Celebrations like Independence Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day are among the things that define the American Experiment. When we declared independence from England nearly 250 years ago, the country didn’t magically become ‘free’ and all our people ‘equal’. We took off one cloak and replaced it with another. The

Is parking back? Will the recovery be a “V” or a lopsided “S”? The answers to these questions mean jobs, profit, and, in some cases, survival. Parking Today reached out to industry leaders and received encouraging news. In some cases, it was counterintuitive. An owner in Chicago, for instance, is

Author Erik Larson writes historical nonfiction based on tremendous in-depth research about his subject. He quotes sources and diarists and blends two or more complex tales to bring us terrific books like “The Devil in White City”, “Thunderstruck”, “The Garden of Beasts” and now, his latest, “The Splendid and the

As I write this in the first week in April, I pray that when you read it, we will have turned that famous corner. My prediction is that we will have done so.  I’m preparing May issue of Parking Today and have come across an article we will be featuring.

The State of Nevada has changed the requirements to get a driver’s license. They have removed the part of the driving test that asks the driver to parallel park. Seems that this is the part of the test most failed by the prospective driver. So, naturally, why not just remove

Longtime readers know that I love to take the temperature of one issue or another by simply looking around. Weather – look outside. Automated vehicles and electric cars – check out the neighborhood. Is the Metro popular – count the number of people on the train as it whizzes by.

As I write this in January, I begin to think about the future. I’m not sure why, I can barely deal with today, but it’s probably due to the New Year. We seem obsessed with what is going to happen. I guess that’s so we can plan and make decisions

When I spoke at a recent regional parking event, I was riffing on the money involved in municipal parking. I told the story of a parking manager who, when asked if he was there to protect the asset known as parking or collect money, asked “on the record or off

I’m writing this the day after Halloween, so it’s difficult to get in the Christmas spirit. I usually reserve most of the gift buying for the week (if not the day) before Christmas and put great pressure on FedEx.  But this time of year isn’t about gift giving, unless you

When John Van Horn approached me to serve as Guest Editor for this November issue of Parking Today – the Veterans in Parking Issue – I was naturally humbled and honored. The coincidence of the timing was not lost upon me, either. It was 30 years ago to the month

Over at his Power 2 Go blog, Keith Jones expresses concern that mergers and acquisitions and the influx of venture capital money into the parking operations world may affect the way operators see their customers. His concern is that once VC money arrives, a company’s concern may move from customer

“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 last month in Southern California. I seemed to have tweaked a few sacred cows. The Forum is primarily designed for municipalities and discussions are relevant

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 of Darkness” and likens our industry’s major issues to the obsession of Conrad’s major character. For those of you without a literary background, like me,

My comments on my blog about Tony Jordan and Portland created a Twitter storm, well maybe a Twitter drizzle, and I found myself lambasted from as far away as Singapore and as close to home as the PDXshoupistas. My problem isn’t criticism, I have a fairly thick skin. My problem

A federal court in the Midwest has ruled that chalking is no longer legal in five midwestern states. What the heck is that all about? It seems that a lawyer in Michigan took a parking citation all the way to Federal Court and won. The court ruled that chalking was similar

The Parking Industry must adapt to changing times. We must become involved in planning and government as urban areas evolve. Parking is part of the future. Terms like ‘reinventing,’ mobility, planning models, and ecosystem are sprinkled liberally in sage publications like this one. Wags like me post platitudes, like those

I’m told I’m a story teller. I was asked to craft a story to go with Dale Denda’s presentation last month at PIE. He posits that we may be looking at the numbers, or failing to look at numbers, concerning auto travel from a perspective that could cloud the issue.

I have been musing about name changes and when I did my daily review of Parknews.biz I noted that a large number of the stories focus on “Mobility” in their headlines and leading paragraphs. In some cases, parking isn’t mentioned until halfway through the story. Every one of the companies mentioned

When you come to PIE, you bring a world of experience to share. You also bring issues to solve. Whether it is curb congestion, revenue collection, enforcement, your customer’s attitude toward parking, or confusion over technology, they are all on the table at PIE 2019. It seems that we all

The World Resource Institute is hawking a blog that is bemoaning the fact that urban sprawl exists and therefore an individual’s carbon footprint is larger since they have things like houses, gardens, and cars, plus have to drive farther to get to work. The WRI posits that we should live

It’s All Hallows Eve as I write and the mind immediately turns to the holidays. Thanksgiving and then Christmas, Chanukah, Ramadan, Chinese New Year. Except for Ramadan, these holidays fall during the winter months. They all involve celebrations and have roots in religion. I know little of the others, but

Well that was scary, for a minute, anyway. When I was given the honor of being this month’s editor for the special Women in Parking edition of Parking Today Magazine a few things immediately went through my mind. At first, I was wondering just what the heck John Van Horn

One year ago, I was approached and asked to be the incoming Women in Parking chairperson. I was honored and flattered. For the past five years I was the numbers girl behind the scenes as the WIP treasurer. I paid the bills, I made sure we didn’t spend too much

Back in the day, particularly in Manhattan, but in other places as well, parking was all about price and availability. If there was space, you charged what you could get, collected it, and let the driver park the car. Garages were cold, dark, and frankly, pretty dirty. You parked, found

Last week I stayed at a major hotel in Las Vegas. The rules are that hotel guests pay for parking but get in-and-out privileges. If you are not a guest, you pay for every exit. Fair enough. I pulled a ticket, left it in my car, and checked in. Being

When I was rereading a piece found in my favorite magazine about TDM and how our betters seem to go for the big, expensive solution to all our problems, I got to thinking about some big, expensive solutions and just how well they succeeded. Consider the high-speed rail line being

I have been to two parking trade events so far this year, the IPI and PIE. I’ll tell you about the IPI in a minute, but first I want to comment on a feeling that seems to be in the air. I felt it first at PIE. There was an indescribable