Mobility and the Resistance

I was surprised when the woman in charge of “Smart Cities” for Los Angeles told me that she couldn’t get the parking department to return her phone calls. What was that all about? Was the parking department in the nation’s second largest city not concerned with sharing data or technology? Or were they simply up to their collective necks in the problems of parking millions of vehicles a day.

When the lauded SF Park program in San Francisco came to an end, no one wanted to say that the 24 million dollar program failed, but it did. Was it because the underlying goal was not to park cars quickly and conveniently, but to do away with cars.

When Julie Dixon holds parking networking events across California and a hundred people from cities and universities show up at each, why is “mobility” never mentioned? These folks are struggling with the problems of parking cars and enforcing parking rules.

When the largest provider of parking control and enforcement hardware and software holds a training program for its customers, more than 400 show up from cities and universities to network and hone their parking skills.

I wonder if “Mobility” might be feeling a bit of push back from the parking professionals who have the boots on the ground and need to fight the daily battle enforcing regulations and ensuring the parking asset is protected.

Is the “resistance” behind the scenes and like the “deep state”,  “deep parking” is doing its job oblivious to the political pressures, or in spite of them?

JVH