Our advertising director was sitting on the tarmac at LAX for an extra hour yesterday because a politician decided to fly in to raise money for his election campaign. I hear he picked up an extra 3 mil for the 18 hours he was in town. Marcy thought it was rude. I agree.
Look I don’t fault politicians for raising money, that’s what makes the world go round. Have at it. Its when they seem to roll over the activities or feelings of others that ticks me off. I understand that the Prez needs security and I’m sure there are valid reasons why air space must be cleared. Fair enough.
However aren’t there alternatives? We have a perfectly good airport at Pt Mugu, about a half hour copter ride from LAX. Its in the country and no one would have been inconvenienced except a few sea gulls. The president took a copter to his first event in LA. It was between LAX and Pt. Mugu. So it might have added an extra 20 minutes to his flight time but then tens of thousands of people at LAX and at subsequent airports where their planes were going would not have been inconvenienced. How many missed flights. How many ate cold dinner, how many…well you get the idea.
I’m not blaming the President, he has a lot of important things on his mind, but are his handlers so tone deaf. Think of the press they could have gotten if the headline read: “President Lands at Mugu to Save Tie Up at LAX.” It just seems that these people just don’t think.
All the people on all those planes know that they were late because of the president. Many just shrugged. But I’ll bet there were a lot that grumbled.
I have no clue who pays for what — but if you are the Prez, there are certain perks. However there should be someone who thinks about the problems caused when he moves from place to place, and fix them. If there is someone who does that, they need to be fired.
JVH
I know, San Francisco again, but they do make headlines. SFPark is expanding its reach into neighborhoods where no parking fee had previously been imposed. We have been following this closely both here and on Facebook. The residents raised hell, it was sort of put on hold, and then the mayor stepped in and said:
But in noting “the world is watching our efforts in parking management,” Lee said SFpark deserves a chance to succeed. And while the roll-out in the neighborhoods targeted for meter expansion has been delayed, he said he doesn’t want to see it killed.
“I also want to make sure that the process includes buy-in from neighborhoods, … make sure we talk to everyone,” Lee said.
Ahhh, now this is important. “The world is watching.” Now that’s an excellent reason for charging for parking. I’m sure the residents who are going to pay the fare really care what people in Shanghai or New Delhi think about the program.
Politicians, we got em, think we could live without them?
JVH
The City of Chicago has cut a deal with the state. Before any person gets a tax refund, they will have a database check and if they owe any parking or moving violations within the city, they will have the amount, I’m assuming including penalties, deducted from the return before its sent out. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
If the person complains, most likely they can have a hearing and if found innocent, have the money returned. However it seems to me that most people who feel they are ‘innocent’ of a parking violation fight it. If you let it go without so much as a “by your leave” my guess is you are guilty as the proverbial sin.
This is a good idea. In some venues, you can’t get your car license renewed if you have outstanding tickets. I like that one too. It would seem that these types of laws would do away with so called ‘unpaid’ tickets, reduce bureaucracy, and greatly help the bottom line of cities. I can’t see, with all the interactive databases there are in the government, why this isn’t a slam dunk.
Brandy?
JVH
H/T The PT Facebook Denizens
The powerful LA Times and its columnist Steve Lopez, I we have reported before, is focusing on scofflaws who abuse handicapped placards. They got someone’s attention — read about it here.
Lopez raised such a stink that the local Parking Enforcement Staff, along with some LAPD officers and a lot of suits from city hall set up a sting in an area where such scofflaws were known to park. The parker would first be checked to see if they were supposed to have a permit, then cited by parking enforcement, then given a citation by the LAPD (for using an poached or illegal permit). Total fine, upwards of a grand. Yep, $1000.
According to Lopez, the group nailed three offenders in less than half an hour, picking up $3000 in citation revenue. Seems like a good deal to me.
Now I’m no expert, but if the joint LAPD/Parking Enforcement task force was kept in play, and they were able to keep up even a 4 an hour rate — 32 a day — they would write over 8000 tickets a year, and pick up an additional $8,000,000 in revenue. You need them both because one (parking) writes for parking without a permit, and the other (LAPD) writes for using someone else’s or a forged permit. Lets say the two officers make a total of $200,000 a year with all pay, overtime, and benefits, including cost of the vehicle.
Pretty good return. Plus, there is no question that the word would get out. You chances of getting a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot without a proper permit went from zero to you will get caught.
Lopez comments on the ethics issue of people taking a handicapped spot and of course the morality is a problem. Of course, politicians never seem to have a problem with immoral behavior. However if you wave Eight Million Dollars under their noses, I’ll bet there will be enforcement teams running around the City of Angels before you can say “parking cheater.”
Well done, Mr. Lopez. If you can’t convince them on the morality issue, talk about money. It gets everyone’s attention.
JVH
The City of Sacramento, CA, is trying, for some reason, to finance a new arena for its NBA Basketball Team, the Kings. The deal is that the city would build the arena and then lease it back to the Kings. They want to pay for the deal by doing a PPP on their parking and pick up $200 million to fund the effort.
The former city treasurer, in this article attempts to make a case for the deal by comparing it to Indianapolis. I’m not sure its the same. Indy cut a long term payout receiving money continuously over the term of the deal and then earmarking the money, I think, for upcoming infrastructure projects in the city. That to me is a lot different than getting a chunk a change up front and seeing your asset make money for someone else for the next 50 years.
First of all — why is a public agency funding a private company? The Kings are a privately owned entity, the owners are going to make millions going forward. If this is a good deal, let them got to a bank, or venture capitalist, or developer, put together funding and build their own arena. Why should the city be involved? If the money isn’t there going forward, its not a good deal for the city and simply a boost for a private enterprise. (I need a new office building — So I should be able to go to the city and have them build one for me and then I will move in and pay them rent? I can’t see that happening. This is no different.) And don’t give me all that about thousands of jobs and all the spin offs. If the owners want the Kings to play in Sacramento ( and they probably have to for a while, the NBA will see to that) then let them build a new stadium themselves. NYC supported the Yankees building a new stadium and they ended up taking it in the shorts, for hundreds of millions. And the Kings aren’t the Yankees.
Second — By my very rough numbers, Sacramento will leave about $700 or more million on the table. Wouldn’t they be better off hiring a professional to run their parking operation? Pay enough to get someone who knows what they are doing. Invest a bit in new parking equipment, and then bring the prices up to market levels, collect all the money, and live in fat city.
But then, what do I know — politicians want it all now — probably to pay off debts that they incurred in the past. Sigh
JVH
Andy tells me that he is sold out of the main hall and now searching out places to put exhibitors as the PIE show’s popularity with vendors breaks all records. The seminar portion of the event is booming, too, as and entire morning of Automated Parking information is scheduled for Tuesday. Vendors will speak, consultants will consultants, and experts from the City of Chicago will tell manufacturers and developers alike what needs to be done to find their way through the maze of city regulations. It is possible, and they are here to help.
The event is March 18-21 in the Windy City. We are at the Hyatt Regency O’hare so we are convenient to all. There’s plenty of time left to sign up — just go to our web site and do your thing. Its a small investment for a large return
JVH
Singapore seems to be following the happenings in SF day by day and the city state’s Paul Barter over at Reinventing Parking is giving good advice to the city. As I have pointed out before areas where the city is beginning to charge for parking for the first time are picking up their torches and pitchforks and its getting pretty hot. They neglected to take into consideration the third leg of Shoup’s trivecta, “Return the money to the neighborhood from wince it came.”
Paul calls this a stakeholder compromise. In other words, make the concept of paying for parking more attractive by giving something back. To wit:
Local stakeholders care about their local parking. Some get territorial about it. This reform suggestion aims to be realistic that people feel a sense of ownership about public spaces in their neighborhoods, including the parking in the streets. They don’t “own” these streets but local governments soon learn that it is foolish to ram through parking reforms that ignore territorial sentiments about parking.
The folks opposed to change also tend to feel more strongly about it than anyone else. So, in social-science-speak, this reform direction is also about defusing the collective action problems associated with parking reform.
So Adaptive Parking reform direction #3 is about giving local stakeholders more reasons to like the reforms and fewer reasons to fear them. It is about accepting that people feel territorial about “their” streets and that we may need to placate those feelings. But it urges us to do so without losing the spirit of the reform. Any compromises should be consistent with the goal of Adaptive Parking to increase the market responsiveness of the local parking system.
The problem in SF is that money from parking is mandated to go to the MTA to fund transportation services, not parking or city services. It seems the folks at SFPark started down this path years ago without considering what was going to happen when they began charging where no charging had gone before.
They seem wedded to Shoup’s theories, but missed a third of the book. He wrote eloquently about how South Pasadena sold their merchants on charging for on street parking by committing to revesting in the neighborhoods and spending the money to improve both infrastructure and parking.
SF seems to be caught. Its hard to imagine MTA giving up any of the millions it receives from parking so there you go. Plus there is a large public transit lobby that wants cars gone, period.
However, if memory serves, Shoupistas have a solution. Let the MTA have the money it is getting now, and give the INCREASE back to the neighborhoods. Everybody wins.
It won’t happen, though. Metro has most likely spent the money it is expecting from the new parking fees so good luck. However there is room for compromise as recommended by Barter. The city has already yielded on charging for parking after hours and on weekends. And this means that some creative parking magic might still win the day.
We shall see if a blend of Shoupista and Singapore Parking will take hold in San Francisco.
JVH
MILWAUKEE, WI, February 8, 2012 – Duncan Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of parking management products and services, announced that its long-time Citation Management division President, Gary Smith, will be stepping down effective March 1 and will be succeeded by Jason Johnston, who currently serves as the division’s West Coast Regional Vice President. Mr. Smith will remain with Duncan in the role of Senior Advisor.
A fourteen-year Duncan executive, Mr. Smith will assume his Senior Advisor role in the next month and will remain a resource to Citation Management and all of Duncan. Under Mr. Smith’s leadership, Citation Management has grown to more than six times its original size. “We have been fortunate to have Gary’s leadership of Citation Management. He has spearheaded our operations, technology, and systems efforts and has grown Citation Management from a niche collections agency into a leader in parking ticket processing and collections services. I’m delighted with how closely Gary and Jason are working to ensure a smooth transition of responsibilities, and I’m glad Gary will remain an asset for us,” said Mike Nickolaus, President and CEO of Duncan Solutions.
Jason Johnston joined Duncan in May 2011 as West Coast Regional Vice President, overseeing operations and technology projects that have helped increase efficiency and improve service delivery to clients. Prior to his joining Duncan, Mr. Johnston served as an operations manager and executive for Central Parking System. “Jason has a long track record of leadership and innovation in the parking management industry, and he has added valuable experience to our team,” said Mike Nickolaus. “His promotion to President of the Citation Management division will allow for the continuation of a long tradition of outstanding achievements established by Gary Smith.”
In the past few weeks I have had face to face discussions with senior members of five revenue control manufacturers. We talked about the marketplace and from their view, it isn’t a pretty place. But it should be.
We are told that due to the recession there has been a tremendous pent up demand for revenue products, both on and off street. Key buys had been put off, and projects that were shelved that are finding their way back to life. The next two years should be super if you are a supplier. So why the long faces?
One told me that he felt that they had become a commodity. “Price is everything. We really low balled a job because we wanted market share in a certain area, went in basically at our cost. A competitor came in at 70% of our price. How can you compete in a market like that.” With so many deals going to public sector owners, with strict bidding rules and requirements, product quality, features and benefits, and one’s track record often take a back seat to price.
I know of one very large, established distributor of parking equipment in Europe that has left the market. “Its just no fun any more.” He has changed his product line and moved his focus out of the EU. Remember Europe leads the US in Parking Equipment by a few years.
Technology is moving at light speed. The advent of electronic purses, the ability to pay with a near field communication (NFC) equipped smart phone, GPS and video enabled enforcement technology, QR code scanners in everyone’s hands, transaction based business models, “apps” that “run” parking garages, the marketplace is awash with startups and new technology that can leave customers and many legacy suppliers scratching their heads.
I just read in Parking Today that one expert said: “Many vendors even tried for some time to simply adapt what they have and call it a ‘cloud’ offering or an online system … to prolong the life of a non-cloud architecture under a new cloud logo or product name.”
It is difficult for a company that has been following one business model (hardware/software sales to solve parking problems) to move to a pricing system where fees may be charged on a per transaction basis and the use of hardware and local server based software is limited. Company “A” may have invested three years in R and D coming out with the latest and greatest Pay on Foot or Pay in Lane, only to find out that during that time technology had outpaced it and its offering is obsolete before the device is on the market.
Plus, severe business model changes often leave traditional sales forces shaking their collective heads and trying to figure out just what it was they are trying to sell. “Liken it to a parking operator that has sales staff in the field selling the quality of their on site personnel and the need for good people to meet and great a customer’s clients,” one manufacturer told me, “and in one day they move to selling operations with no personnel, no staff, and a centrally located control system sometimes a thousand miles away. Its a paradigm shift many cannot make.”
And its not like many of them have a lot of time to make the move. If a dozen new companies come on the scene, providing high tech solutions to parking problems, and half fail, that still means half succeed. And even though there will be start up problems, and bugs in the systems, they can be solved quickly and the successful companies will do so. Plus, there seems to be a lot of venture capital out there, looking for technology to support. Did you ever think you would hear the term “burn rate” related to a parking supplier?
Legacy companies still have thousands of systems installed and hundreds of dealer/distributors that they have to support. Moving in a completely new direction will require a nimbleness that few may have.
Add all this to a market that is struggling to recover from the recession and you have a lot of uncertainty. “You have to be very smart right now,” one supplier told me, “you are being forced to make a series of decisions and if one is the wrong one, you go down the wrong path, and there is no recovery. A lot of companies just don’t have the management expertise to handle this ‘state of flux.’”
We have seen the face of the parking industry change from cigar boxes to where we are today in 30 years. The next face we see is on the way, or perhaps already here.
JVH
Stanley Epstein is a class action lawyer. And here we go. I reported last summer that Stanley and his wife had begun a class action lawsuit against the city of Santa Monica over a parking ticket his wife received. Stanley was nice enough to call me and fill me in and trust me, you don’t want this lawyer after you. You can read an update here.
Stan’s wife got a citation for parking illegally. They are not disputing that. They are disputing the way it was handled. She paid the fine and then asked for a hearing. Her citation was upheld and it should have ended there. However Stan and co noticed that the letter upholding the citation did not meet the standards set by the state which clearly set down that the city must tell the person receiving the citation WHY it was upheld. (“You were parked in a no parking zone and we checked to be sure it was marked and sure enough, it was so you are guilty”, something like that.)
Other cities in the area like LA, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills seem able to do this, but Santa Monica doesn’t. This is a problem for SM since if Stan wins, they will have to go back and perhaps cancel and refund all those tickets.
Stan is not unreasonable — he simply asked that the city change it policies (it has done so) and then notify all the folks who have gotten tickets that they can, if they like, request an explanation and if they do so, be sent one (there are about 30,000 of these) and if the city can’t come up with a reason, the tickets refunded. It seems that the clerk that adjudicates the tickets actually has a reason written in each case, but they just neglected to tell the poor SOB who didn’t move his car on street cleaning day.
The stumbling block seems to be that Stan wants the city to come clean and tell the story and name the people who screwed up the procedure in the beginning and publish all this in the city’s newsletter. If the city had done all that Stan was willing to go away — after they pay his legal fees. The city has balked at this.
So Stan is going to court and who knows how much SM will spending defending a seemingly indefensible position.
I’ll keep you posted, as I know Stan will keep me informed.
JVH
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