Shoah
Ever notice that you go your entire life and never see a certain word in print, but then when you first see it, you then see it again the next day, and probably again the next. These are usually obscure words not in the mainstream.
For Instance – I ran across the word Shoah in a book I am reading that has a tangential connection to the Holocaust. Shoah is the Hebrew word Jews use for Holocaust. Its original meaning, according to Webster, is catastrophe. When Jews speak to each other about the Holocaust, it’s the Shoah.
Sure enough, this morning, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, there it is again, for the second time. In this case it is used in an article about the German Chancellor giving a speech. I wonder where it will pop up next.
Walls and Givins
Vince Walls and Ron Given have new jobs. Vince is the Project Manager for National Accounts for McGann and Ron is the manager for new business development for Citation Management. Vince will work out of NJ and Ron, if the area code is correct, out of DC.
For a bit more background on these two, see the March Issue of PT.
Automatic Parking
Vince’s former life (with Autospace) brings to mind the issue of Automated Parking. I got a call last week from a functionary at Robotic asking what I thought of the Automated Parking Industry. Boy did he get an ear full. Say what you want about Robotic, at least they succeeded in getting a system sold, up and running — anybody remember Hoboken.
Automated Parking part of the Parking Industry, however, has been a complete bust. Except for Robotic’s Hoboken and Spacesavers’ DC projects there have been none, zero, zip, nada, nine, projects in the past what, two decades in the US. This isn’t an industry, it’s a group of people who don’t want to invest what it takes to get the thing moving. Gerhard Haag at Robotic invested what it took, and then proceeded to fall to the problems and and construction in NJ. If anybody wants to provide automated facilities in the US, they need to focus their scope on places where they are needed, manufacture them here so they can drive the cost down where people can afford them, and then promote them for what they are, not a panacea, but a realistic solution to problems that can’t be solved elsewhere.
Leadership in Parking
Who is going to provide the leadership, training, information, and support to the 80% of the parking industry not represented by the IPI and NPA if one assumes that these two organizations actually do supply leadership to their members. Yep, that’s right, the IPI has bout 1400 and the NPA perhaps a few more. Assuming the two have 4,000 members, who represents the rest of the more than, what, 30,000 parking pros out there who make their living every day in the parking business. There are 3500 cities with more than 10,000 people in the US and nearly 4,000 colleges and universities. Just between those two, there are almost 8,000 who might have need of parking support. That doesn’t count airports, hotels, developers, shopping centers, hospitals, venues, and the list goes on.
One of these two organizations will make a decision in the next few months that will enable it to reach out to the entire industry. Who will it be?
Take a sec and bookmark this site so you can come back and check out our parking blog daily. We use a blog provider. In a couple of days you can get to us through the PT web site, as soon as Suda, our web master, gets around to making the change.
http://parkingtoday.typepad.com/
JVH
