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charging $1 an hour for curb parking until midnight and on Sundays; it also dedicated the meter money to pay for added public services in Old Pasadena. In the same year, Los Angeles reduced the meter rate in Westwood from $1 an hour to 50 cents an hour, and kept curb parking free in the evenings and on weekends; Los Angeles does not use the meter money to pay for added public services in the Village. Old Pasadena boomed and Westwood Village decayed. Which city has the right policy? So that’s the short answer, at least if I did understand the question. Donald Shoup
A Valet Surprise At PIE, PT moved from seminar to seminar to see that all was going well. The roundtables were no exception. We had four, dealing with handicapped parking, lighting, problem customers and valet parking. As we walked through the first three, there were no surprises – about two dozen people in each, lively discussions, and the like. In the fourth – valet – we were stunned. More than 60 people crowded the room. Leader Mike Pendergraft of American Valet Parking had his hands full. Continued on Page 30
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Just a taste of PIE 2006 … from Page 29
When asked about the popularity of the session, we were told it was simple: No one had ever had a valet session before. People want to talk about service – and what’s more service than valet. Well, duh! – It was suggested that as traffic in garages becomes heavier, it’s better to add valet and valet assist at peak times than build a new garage to handle those few cars that need parking during rushes. On-street valet has become popular in many areas, as has using valet at airports, in hospitals and at other spots that previously didn’t have the service. Valet is on the move.
The Public/Private Team The first seminar at 2006 PIE II in Los Angeles – simulcast to PIE in Chicago – dealt with the privatization of individual parts of the parking operation. Mary Houghton of the Phoenix Group led Bob Hindle of Parking Concepts, Jano Baghdarian of the city of Glendale, CA, and Bob Bortfeld of the city of Santa Monica through an interesting discussion of the issues of the
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public/private team. The concern: If the public sector has too many formal ways to charge-back the private sector for errors, the private group could be motivated not to report problems and work to fix them. This is particularly a problem when dealing with customers. Jano pointed out that although Glendale has $400 or $500 fees it can assess its vendors for mistakes, it seldom does. “For one thing, they can simply pay it.” Well, think about it: If paying the $500 saves them $10,000 in other ways, why not just pay the fine and go on? On the other hand, Jano said, if the vendor is motivated to provide the best service, and brings problems to the city or other public entity without fear of recrimination, issues can be quickly resolved, and communications work out well. If it becomes clear that a vendor simply isn’t doing a good job, the best way to handle it is to void the contract and hire another. Trying to force someone to do a good job seldom works
Networking Another big surprise was the popularity of Speed Networking – more than 100 people jammed the room and 17 three-minute sessions getting to know the others in the room. It was like “speed
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dating,” but the results were a lot of contacts that could be used when problems or questions arose in the future. Leader Kimberly Kayler said her feedback was overwhelmingly positive. A few kinks will be worked out before next year. Comments from PIE staffers Sandra Watson, Dawn Newman, and John Van Horn.
PowerPoint, PDFs or DVDs of many of the PIE seminars are available at www.parkingtoday.com.
PT
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Comments From a Manager
What Is and You Know th BY ROBERT MILNER, CAPP
W
e recently began the task of revising our automated parking revenue control cashier’s manual.
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “manual” as a handy book for use as a guide, reference, etc. I mention this because the process caused me to start thinking about how information gets into the manual itself and, more important, how the information gets to the people who actually perform the work. In this case, it would be the cashier. After a little research, it became clear to me that in many industries there were many cases in which most workers/technicians were unable to document simple procedures they performed routinely each day. The reason for this may be because many of these employees learned their jobs by “watching Matt do it.” The problem, of course, is that Matt may have been a novice himself. And as is always the case, these real training issues were discovered only when a serious customer-service issue arose or a detailed task analysis was performed, as was in Matt’s case. As has been mentioned in previous articles, a formula for training issues is illustrated in the graphic nearby: After performing our detailed task analysis, we determined there were more than 155 tasks and subtasks that we
What Is
GAP
What Is Desired
asked our cashiers to perform on a given day. It is important to note that we included both management and cashiers in performing this task analysis. As was the case in many task analysis, management and the employees have a slightly different view on which tasks are performed every day. I note this because I believe that only after identifying all of an employee’s job tasks and responsibilities can a useful manual be developed to ensure that correct training will take place. The reason I use “will take place” is, as W. Edwards Circle #29 on Reader Service Card 32
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d What Is Desired – Do the Difference? Deming, the “Total Quality Management” guru, once said, that this would be “just like taking lessons on the piano from someone who never had a lesson on the piano.” In other words, if you learned how to use the cash register on your own, you may not be the best teacher for someone else. Neither teacher nor pupil will know what is right and what is wrong. Not everyone is a trainer. My point in all of this is simple: Cashiers “in the booth” represent an important, yet sometimes neglected segment of the parking industry, and they suffer from too many years of poorly focused training.
I realize that some companies/organizations out there spend money to have a great cashier training program in place, and to you, my hat is off. To the others, I say we as parking professionals/managers need to find out what the cashier’s needs are and act accordingly. After all, every cashier/employee learns something from on-the-job training – what that something is is all up to us.
If you learned how to use the cash register on your own, you may not be the best teacher for someone else.
Robert Milner is Director of Parking and Transportation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He can be reached at
[email protected].
PT
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NOTES FROM BIG BEN …
We Brits Have Been Sh BY PETER GUEST
I
just got back from PIE in Chicago, where JVH had invited me provided I gave a talk. It is always difficult to judge how things went, but by using my patented speaker assessment system – nobody walked out, nobody threw anything and they clapped at the end – I guess it went OK. The main event was, of course, the Donald Shoup presentation, where he talked about the issues highlighted in his book. From this side of the pond, it all seemed eminently sensible. As long ago as 1976 with the Greater London Development Plan, we had moved to where Prof. Shoup is trying to get you guys. Further, it is taken as read here that if street parking is charged for, then it will be higher priced and more restricted than off-street. In simple terms, we treat street parking as a premium service. I wonder if part of the problem is your currency. A widely available one or two dollar coin could revolutionize your street tariffs.
Transport Impact Analysis Perhaps the next move for Shoupistas will be to adopt our approach to dealing with this issue. Any significant new development has to be supported with a Transport Impact Analysis (TIA) which the developer provides. The TIA sets out the expected travel to and from the building and explains how this will be met by using sustainable transport (bus/rail/cycle/walking). Parking provided if allowed on the basis of an irreducible minimum need for car use provided it does not exceed the maximum parking standard allowed for that type of building. We still have standards that relate parking to floor area or seating or bedrooms, but I think we are a little further down the path toward rational parking provision than you guys.
It’s the Law Poor old JVH, he tries, but sometimes it’s all just a bit too sophisticated for him. His article in August’s Parking Today talking about our civil parking system quite correctly states that there is a bit of a row about how and why cities collect parking fines. Nobody likes paying for parking, and nobody likes paying fines when they get it wrong, Right so far, John, but this is where you go a Circle #79 on Reader Service Card 34
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bit wrong. The cities use traffic management law, not Fiscal Law, and although they can charge and fine – and are expected to cover their costs – they are explicitly prohibited from using the parking powers to raise money. No parking manager will admit on the record to having a financial target; off the record, many concede that they are expected to generate revenue. Further, the law ring-fences some of the money for reinvestment in things such as new car parks and better buses, but creative accounting does make a lot of this money disappear. That said, if the money doesn’t come from the parking fine – which hits the rule breaker – then it will come from the local tax, which hits us all. Part of the problem is a matter of perception. There are just too many bad-news stories where cities and their contractors are being caught out by “investigative journalists” to be bending or breaking the rules and doing questionable things to generate more tickets, which they have previously denied. My daughter recently
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Shoupistas for Years … parked in a two-hour zone and got a ticket for illegal parking. The zone started at 8 a.m., and the ticket was written at 8.30 a.m. The ticket should never have been written, but if half the people pay up, the city will be generating thousands in revenue by lying.
Hit the Fan Big Time Meanwhile, the ordure has hit the whirly thing big time here. The law requires that certain information appears on a parking ticket, and just recently, drivers have challenged the validity of their fines on the basis that the ticket showed the date of issue, not the date of offense, as the law requires. Now, of course, for tickets placed on the car, these are the same, but the adjudicators (a sort of low-level traffic court) has ruled that the driver was right and the ticket wrong. So far so bad. The adjudicator’s ruling applied to only the specific ticket, and although other cities should take account of the ruling, they are not obliged to.
Some cities changed their tickets, some didn’t, and several more motorists challenged their tickets. Then, in a truly suicidal move, one city decided to appeal the adjudicator’s ruling to the high court, the third highest in the land. It lost, and what had been a local issue became national case law, and all tickets with an issue date but no date of offense became invalid at a stroke. Thousands of tickets worth millions of pounds have been canceled. Some cities have ignored the ruling (although the parking managers issuing “illegal” tickets actually risk jail time). And in a situation that could have frightening implications, a motorist has started a case to get back a fine he had already paid on the grounds that it was illegally collected. Such rulings are not usually applied retrospectively if the city was believed to have acted in good faith. But the fact that the adjudicator’s earlier rulings were largely ignored could mean that some cities may soon have some very big bills to pay. Watch this space.
Peter Guest is PT’s correspondent east of the Atlantic and the newly elected president of the British Parking Association. He can be reached at
[email protected].
PT
Duncan, Peppercoin Forge Partnership Duncan Solutions Inc. and Peppercoin Inc. have formed a strategic partnership to offer integrated solutions designed to grow parking revenues by increasing the profitability of credit and debit card transactions and deliver conveniences to motorists. The companies, which already work together in a number of cities, are enhancing their relationship with additional technology integration and coordinated sales efforts. “Duncan’s deep domain expertise and market leadership, coupled with Peppercoin’s unique small-payments technology platform, provides the strongest solution to municipalities looking to enhance on-street parking,” said Duncan President Mike Nickolaus. “Working closely together we can provide services to any town or city that improve parking convenience, increase revenues and enhance operational efficiency.” The Duncan/Peppercoin strategic partnership brings new features to multi-space parking pay stations. These reduce costs and street clutter by handling up to 10 parking spaces on a single meter. New features include: Profitable Card Processing – “Intelligent Aggregation” reduces card processing costs by bundling parking transactions from the same motorist into one larger transaction. Municipalities benefit from cost savings on per-transaction processing fees. New Parking Payment Models – Municipalities can now provide pre-paid parking offers in addition to traditional pay-as-you-go pricing. “Over the past year, Peppercoin has continued to develop our Small Payment Suite to benefit transit and parking companies looking for consumer-friendly, costeffective parking solutions,” said Mark Friedman, Peppercoin’s president and CEO. “We look forward to working closely with Duncan to help municipalities offer a variety of payment options to best meet customer needs.” Circle #130 on Reader Service Card OCTOBER 2006 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com
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JVH comments on Parking News every day at PT Blog – log on at www.parkingtoday.com. Each month, there are at least 40 other comments like these, posted daily.
American Girl OK, I admit it. I had never been to American Girl, didn’t know what it was about, and frankly didn’t care. However, the granddaughter was visiting, so naturally it was time for my indoctrination. Let me tell you, these folks have it down to a science. They grab the kids when they are like 2 years old and keep ’em hooked well into adolescence. And the girls seem to love it. They should love it. If you get out of there for under 250 bucks, you are being cruel to your American Girl. For those of you who don’t understand how it works, here’s the deal. They have about half a dozen dolls, each named and themed, from revolutionary war time up to 1944. Each has many period wardrobes, and all the trimmings. The dolls are about 2 feet tall, and cost – are you ready? – $105 each. However, that’s only the beginning. After that there are outfits, clothes, hats, strollers– it doesn’t end. Each doll has its own story, so there are books, music, and I assume somewhere a CD for each. There is an American Girl cafe and a doll hospital. There a section for baby dolls … and – are you
ready? – a beauty shop for the dolls. It was noon on a Friday, and the place was mobbed. I understand when it opened that the area around the center where it is located was inundated for weeks with cars, traffic and crowds. It seems to have backed off. Oh, yes, in addition to the dolls above, there is also a new 2006 sweetie with surfboards, motor scooters, swim suits and the like – she is, it seems, Hawaiian. I understand that, originally, AG caught some flak because all the dolls were white, so they have added a black doll, a Native American doll, and now an Asian/Hawaiian doll. PC to the end. This is marketing at its finest. The kids love it. And, frankly, it’s certainly a lot healthier than reading about the latest Britney disaster or watching MTV. It’s good to have your grandkids around to complete your education.
There has to be a better way The city of New York writes 7,000 parking tickets a day to folks such as UPS and FedEx (UPS pays $18 million a year in parking ticket fines). Then the companies go to court and get a bunch of them thrown out or reduced. Here’s the problem: There simply is not enough on-street parking space for delivery drivers to use. So, to keep their schedules, they double park, park in driveways, crosswalks, at fire
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hydrants, etc. They gotta deliver the goods, and the parking fines become a cost of doing business. UPS says that NYC is the only place on Earth they have this problem. I’ve been in London, Paris, Rome, Shanghai – and let me tell you, the congestion and parking looks like New York. Well, maybe not exactly the same. The deal is this: The conventional wisdom is that New York cares about where the trucks park on a sliding scale – don’t care if you double park, care a little if you block a driveway, and really really care if you block a fire hydrant. OK, the real reason for all the tickets? NYC wants the $100 million a year they generate in income. So why not try this: Select four or five spots per block that can be used for deliveries and mark them. Normal business hours – Provide in-vehicle meters for the delivery companies. The meters must be used in obvious delivery vehicles, not an owner’s personal Mercedes. Charge what it takes to make 15 percent of the spaces available at all times. – If UPS is paying $18 million a year and also handling all the admin costs of fighting and paying the tickets, and the city is paying for writing 7,000 tickets a month to UPS, at a cost of what, $20 a ticket (probably much more), then it would seem my plan would work. UPS and other delivery companies would pay whatever the required amount to make parking available. They wouldn’t have to look for spaces, as one would be readily available. If they had to double park, so be it. The meter would be running, and the city would be receiving their money. Would it work? I don’t have the slightest idea. But it would certainly make more sense than the bureaucratic nightmare that the current system causes for both the city and the companies.
There’s one born every minute Heh! Someone goes online and reserves a service at the airport. The deal is that the parking company will meet you at the airport, take your car, secure it and then return it when you come back. The attraction? The price is well below the going rate for parking on the airport or at local off-airport locations. So what happened? Some folks didn’t get their cars back at all and couldn’t find the company when they went looking. Others had damaged cars, other people’s belongings in their cars, high mileage on the odometer – it goes on and on. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
This kind of story causes us all pain Why? Because it’s a tragedy, it’s human suffering. And it points out that parking facilities can be places where crime happens. A woman is kidnapped in a parking garage. Her suspected abductor has been caught (using her credit cards, etc.), but she has not been found. The probable outcome is grim. The problem isn’t that it happened; stuff like this happens all the time. It’s the human condition. The problem also isn’t that it happened in a parking garage – however, there is no Continued on Page 38 Circle #166 on Reader Service Card OCTOBER 2006 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com
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from Page 37
The heads-up
question that we, as an industry, could do more with our security (increase the lighting, paint the walls white, have a patrol wander through from time to time). The problem is the way it was reported. And I’m not sure what to do about it. It’s all true and accurate The headline read – “More Patrols for Parking Decks.” The lede points out that the woman was abducted from a parking garage. I guess the “Five W’s” demand a “where.” What makes me cringe as a parking guy is when stuff happens on our turf. I have a feed from Yahoo that sends me articles with the word “parking” in them. It has a facility through which you can list words you don’t want included. If it didn’t use that facility, I would receive more than 150 stories a day. However, I do, and receive about 15 per day. The words I take out? “killed -murder -attacked -victim shoot -body -death -rape -dead -gun -gunshot -rob -robbery -shot shots” – ’cause all those things happen frequently in parking garages and lots. Parking has bad PR. Think about it – everything from the shootout in “Fargo” to Watergate happened in a parking garage. We aren’t going to change “If it bleeds, it leads,” so what can we do? The negative image of the parking industry starts in our garages and lots. Any ideas out there? Wouldn’t it be great if someone in trouble thought to run toward a parking garage, not away from it.
According to the Plain Dealer newspaper, the Cleveland airport raised its rates a buck a day but didn’t tell anyone, and of course the politicos are miffed. Let’s get this straight – the airport has the authority to raise its rates up to $25 a day (they are now at $14). So they bumped the rates a dollar. However, two months after it occurred (on July 1), somebody noticed and called the City Council, the mayor, and for all I know, the head of the local SPCA. Naturally, the politicos aren’t happy being blindsided by this abuse of power, so they are running for cover saying they should have been given a heads-up. OK, I agree – parking is a political nightmare. And the management of the airport would do well to keep its bosses informed of every time it makes any moves in that arena. Here’s my recommendation: The next time they want to do something, just do it. And at exactly the same time that it goes into effect, they should send an FYI e-mail to all concerned. If you notify the bosses too soon, they will get involved, stir the pot, and you will get nothing done. However, if you do it after the already approved action is a fait accompli, then you can do your job, get things done, and ensure that the politicians are armed to run interference for you. Works all the way around. Log on to PT’s Parking Blog at www.parkingtoday.com
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Sunset Parking Service Celebrates 25th Anniversary
Sunset Parking Service is celebrating its 25th year as one of the largest parking and valet companies in Southern California. Established in 1981, the company was founded by Michael Harth based on his desire to serve the parking needs of restaurants in his local community. Since the company’s inception, Sunset Parking has grown to include more than 120 parking and valet locations and 500 employees. “I started this company in 1981 with the goal of providing something no other parking and valet services were offering – trust and value,” said Harth. “Looking back over the past 25 years, I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. Without the incredible team of employees at Sunset Parking
Service, we wouldn’t be the company that we are today.” “Sunset Parking has been providing our restaurants with great valet service for 25 years,” said Michael Hundhausen, VP of Operations for TS Restaurants, including Jake’s Del Mar. “Everything from their attention to grooming standards to their commitment to safety and security is a reflection of their dedication to being the best at what they do.” After 12 successful years in providing valet services, Sunset Valet expanded into full-service parking structure and surface lot management, creating its sister company, Sunset Parking Management. Since working with locations like Del Mar Plaza and Hotel Parisi, many of their structure and lot clients have seen parking revenues increase by 50% due to Sunset’s ability to automate facilities, drive stronger revenues and improve costs. “In many cases Sunset has not only exceeded our expectations, but has been creative in finding solutions to issues inherent to our very unique shopping center,” said Terry Hall, general manager of Seaport Village. “Sunset started managing Seaport Village in January 2004, and in the first year, landlord income for parking increased by 89%.
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PT The Auditor
I Can Make Money L I walked around the floor at the 2006 PIE conference in Chicago and was heartened that I found one of my major customers, a city in the heartland, was using state-of-the-art equipment, and it was making my life much easier.
This wise parking manager had installed a fully online realtime system that communicated over the ‘net. Every bit of data, from revenue summaries to individual commands by each cashier, was available online to someone with the proper credentials – one of those would be moi. This feature not only helped capture a criminal, but also saved the city time and a lot of kibble paid out to this old dog. A few weeks later I was dozing in the sun, dreaming of poodles and Paris, when the phone rang. It was my customer. He thought he had a problem, but didn’t know what to do. I was to catch a flight immediately. “Hold it,” I said. “I’m in the middle of something. Let me call you back.” I then rolled over so I could reach my laptop, which was running on the local Starbucks hot spot next door, and I pulled up the city’s system. I looked at exceptions – I always check
there first, because it’s easy, and because when people steal, they usually cause something to stand out. This city had a couple of validations – most were routine, but handicapped validations were special. Handicapped parkers could park for free. Now I didn’t like this validation, but those were the rules. What was supposed to happen was that when a handicapped person came up, they were to show their handicapped decal to the camera and the cashier would then run the transaction with a “handicapped” validation. That way we could audit each one. Most cashiers had an average of two to four handicapped validations per shift. One, however, had 20. Now either handicapped folks were on the same schedule or something was fishy. I began to think my customer’s suspicions were correct. I then honed in on that shift. I also am able to access the city’s security camera log and so I could compare the handicapped transactions with the video of what was actually taking place. Well – the cashier would simply display the actual amount due, collect it, cancel the transaction and then immediately rerun the transaction with the handicapped validation, let the person out and keep the money. I also noted
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Lying in the Sun by returning part of the money stolen. I thought this was sad. If someone walked up to a cashier and stole $1,000, that person would be in jail. However, this criminal-cashier abused the trust placed in her by her boss, devised a complicated scheme to steal a lot more than a grand, and will most likely get off basically scot-free. It happens all the time. I know of a case where a garage manager was caught stealing and went to court. His lawyer argued that he was a poor downtrodden immigrant who was barely getting by and had mouths to feed and etc. etc. etc. The D.A. agreed to let him go, providing he returned an agreed amount. Let’s see: He was bailed out of jail with cash, not a bond. When he agreed to the amount he was to pay, there was no argument; he paid it that day, in cash. He also paid his attorney, court fees and other costs. What’s wrong with this picture? The guy’s a thief and should be treated as such. Just one dog’s opinion.. Woof!
PT that she always put the money from that transaction in a separate slot in the cash drawer. The canceled transaction brought up another problem, so I ran all the canceled transactions for the week. Most cashiers had a few per shift, but this one was out of control. There were, on average, 40 canceled transactions per shift – 20 for the handicapped and 20 more. On the second type, the cashier would simply key in a manual transaction (used when the ticket can’t be read) after the canceled transaction, and the person would be let out during the grace period. Once again, the money was placed in the “special” slot. From time to time, the cashier would get up and lean over the cash drawer, masking her actions from the camera. When she sat down again, the “slot” where she had placed the money was empty. I reported all this to the parking manager. He called the police, and she was arrested the next day. The manager told me he could take it from there, but based on the amount taken on the days I checked, the cashier had enough to afford a Ferrari and a house at the beach. The big deal? I did all this from my spot in the sun on the back porch. I could have been in Hong Kong, Shanghai or anywhere with a broadband Internet connection. Rather than travel two days and have all the expense of airfare, hotels and the rest, I was able to provide the service to my customer and save it some big “expense” bucks. Oh, did you notice that in the third paragraph I used the word “criminal?” This one frosts my toenails. I was speaking to my editor about this column and told him I figured that more than likely the cashier would plea bargain, lose her job, and get off Circle #42 on Reader Service Card OCTOBER 2006 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com
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They Need 1,000 Words by Noon … BY JVH
O
ne thousand words about parking, off the top of my head. (11)
I have a space that Shelly and Rad tell me needs to be filled so we can send PT to the printers. It will take about 1,000 words, more or less. I have a lot of articles in reserve, but they are scheduled for a future issue. I would be robbing Peter to … well, you know. (68) I spoke to a woman today who wanted to know all about parking, and she had about half an hour. I think she was working for a company trying to sell something to the industry. I get these calls all the time – everything about parking in half an hour. I started by trying to tell her that to do that was like trying to teach her quantum physics in half an hour. She said it can’t be that complicated. I told her that it all depends ... It depends on where the garage or lot is, who owns it, and for what it is being used. I told her that a freestanding garage in Dallas next to an office building might have no attendants or manager, just someone to run a broom through it now and then and to check to see if the lights are still working. In her native New York, it was different. The Madison Square
Garden garage on 31st Street between 7th and 8th is a completely different animal. It holds, what, about 800 cars, has automated revenue control, but uses, I think, valet assist to squeeze more than 1,100 cars into the facility during events at the Garden. It’s an older building, so they need to be concerned about maintenance, snow, ice, salt, elevators and the rest. My guess is that the facility generates more than 12 million dollars a year, maybe much more. I have no clue how many employees they have, but I would guess they number in the dozens. They have ongoing maintenance, a slam-bang revenue control system and all kinds of other expenses. They park cars daily, monthly, event and probably have side deals with hotels and such all around for valet and the like. (406) This woman wouldn’t give up. I then went into detail about the technical side, on-street versus off-street collections, dailies versus contract, the problems with ice, snow, spalling, lighting, security, insurance. And the rest Finally, she did note that “gee, parking is pretty complicated, isn’t it.” She then asked for some people she could talk to who, I assumed, she hoped would be a bit kinder and not explain all the complexities of parking. Thinking back on the conversation, this may be one of our industry’s problems. “It’s just parking cars, isn’t it?” Nothing complicated, no issues, just get some guy with entry-level skills to put a car in a slot and take some money. What’s the big deal? Many of the professionals do make it look easy. And over the
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