Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

Sandra Smith Resort Municipality of Whistler

Peter Lange Texas A&M University

Blake Laufer T2 Systems, Inc.

Three Major Trends in Parking

Seeing the forest instead of the treesFocus on the big picture

Empowerment: A buzzword no longerAllow staff and vendors to truly add value

The geek shall inherit the EarthRapid technological advancement

The Big Picture

Focus on the big things Standardize your operations Measure the changes

The Big Picture - Focus Focus on the major items while leaving the

minor ones to others. Know whether the changes you’re making are

really improvements. Think long-term: you don’t really want to change

everything overnight

The Big Picture - Standards

Standardization give you more choice in solutions, keeps costs (exceptions) down.

Do what you do well (parking) and don’t do what you don’t do well (everything else).

The Big Picture - Measurement

Measurement is needed to know whether you’re winning or losing the game.

Seek out KPI’s (key performance indicators)

To run like a business you must analyze everything before making a change.

Empowerment

Buzzword of the 90’s, it’s become standard in business models but without the hype.

Need to consider the benefactor of each suggested improvement.

Opportunities for empowerment: Staff Vendors Customers

Empowerment - Staff

Front-line staff are a wealth of detailed knowledge about the operation.

Provide very clear objectives for the department so that staff can work within these boundaries.

Give staff authority to make decisions

Empowerment - Vendor

If it’s not within your core business then consider outsourcing.

Need to really understand your costs and cost structure before outsourcing.

Some vendors even provide services directly to your customers on your behalf.

Empowerment - Customer Provide the right information in a

timely fashion so that customers can self-serve.

Providing customer access to a customer’s account does not mean a loss of credibility, security, or authority.

Utilize technology to allow your customers to access services on their schedule

Technology

Rate of change of technology is not decreasing. Technology provides a competitive advantage to

your operation. Some trends to watch:

RFID Wireless Systems Integration In-car Meters

Technology - RFID

RFID = Radio Frequency IDentificationCan be used anywhere you might use a

barcode – but RFID is invisible and doesn’t require a “line of sight” to read

Technology - Wireless

Wireless technologies have matured and are growing rapidly in parking.Short range (WiFi, 802.11b)Long range (cellular data, WiMax)

Technology – Integration

Integration means making disparate systems communicate and exchange data.

Overall system integration lessens the load on humans, leads to more efficiency.

Technology - Integration“We need to interoperate, we need to

make these things happen and we need to just stop the noise and start the collaboration and cooperation…”

“I think there is nothing… in this

that will do anything other than to delight

customers….”

April 2, 2004: Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commenting on the Sun and Microsoft’s new cooperative agreements.

Technology – In-Car Meters

This is relatively new in North America, successfully implemented at Whistler and other locations.

In-car meter is a hangtag-style device that charges for parking when activated.

Technology - General

Does implementation of technology take away peoples’ jobs?

How is business process management changed?

Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

Sandra Smith ssmith@whistler.caPeter Lange plange@tamu.eduBlake Laufer blaufer@t2systems.com