I have spoken to a number of PARCS (Parking Access Revenue Control Systems) suppliers and discover that both Chicago’s O’Hare and Los Angeles International airports are “going out” for new parking control systems. What I didn’t realize was just how antiquated the existing at the number 2 and number three largest airports in the country are.
I’m told that after ‘walking’ the airport’s parking operations in preparation for bidding, vendors shake their heads. The existing systems are ‘off line’, have little or no license plate inventory, and the most amazing, in a number of the garages at LAX, there are push buttons in the booths to override the cashier terminals, such as they are.
The equipment is typically a hybrid of a number of manufacturers, most decades old and long past the point of original vendor support. LAX has gone out at least once in the past five years for a new system, but the price was deemed too high.
Its hard to believe that the operators didn’t provide the airports with information concerning the issues with the equipment. So I wonder why the powers that be have taken so long to carry on with the process of replacing the equipment. With upwards of $75 million in revenue at O’Hare and $150 million at LAX, it would seem that there would be an incentive to upgrade the technology that ensures that all the revenue is collected.
One wry vendor told me that he would be shocked if the revenue increase that typically is seen after an equipment upgrade wasn’t enough to pay for the installation, which is bound to cost tens of millions, in 18 months.
Its lucky there is a separation between landside and airside at airports because if not, planes might be landing at night between cars lined up along each runway with their lights on.
I guess I can sort of understand when building owners don’t replace equipment that can ensure increases in revenue. After all, the parking take is often a small part of the total revenue of a building project. However at an airport, the parking fees are often number one or two in revenue, behind or just ahead of landing fees.
A lot of airports have upgraded their parking systems in the past few years. Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, Denver, Baltimore, JFK/LaGuardia/Newark, Boston, Atlanta and many others. One wonders why its taken these two so long to catch up.
JVH
Technology took less than a year to catch up with a complaint I had about using cell phones to receive parking information. I opined that checking a cell phone screen for available parking was contrary to good driving habits and probably laws across the fruited plain. I scoffed at cities that were embracing such programs as I said they flew in the face of logic. Well meh…
I just read a blog post at “ParkMe” and find that the problem has been solved. The folks at ParkMe,(formerly Parking in Motion) have combined their App “ParkMe” with an outfit called Magnifis and its App “Robin.” Read all about it here.
So here’s the deal. Instead of pushing buttons on your phone and squinting at a screen to determine the location of available parking, you simply speak to “Robin” and I assume “she” responds. You keep both hands on the wheel and your attention focused. “Robin,” like the voice on your GPS, will give directions and if you ask, will provide locations of both on and off street parking near your destination. Neat, huh.
I’m told that “Robin” compares most favorably with Apple’s Siri but is designed to be used in a vehicle. “Think Kitt from the Knight Rider series.” I read that she actually surpasses Siri as she can remember the thread of a conversation you are having with her. Hmmmm. Possibilities abound.
Technology 1, JVH 0
JVH
Traffic and parking are a mess in most underdeveloped countries. Try to navigate Mumbai, Bangkok, Sao Paulo or virtually any Chinese city and you will agree. The local governments are jumping on the bandwagon to require parking when new businesses open up. And they do so at their peril.
Paul Barter over at Reinventing Parking has a great post where he uses a seven year old piece to prove a point about what has happened to many central cities in the US and how parking requirements have made it virtually impossible for downtown area to renew and prosper. Check it out.
There are a couple of problems with the Planetzen piece Paul links, the major one is that the author feels that the solution to problems is public provided parking (either on or off street) and that this should be paid for by local merchants by taxing them for the parking spaces they aren’t required to have. (Peter Guest comments on the fiasco this caused in the UK in June’s PT, on the streets – or at least the ‘net — next week.)
I tend to agree with Don Shoup that the free market is the best approach here. If parking is needed, and if the on street spaces are properly priced, then off street garages would be a viable commercial venture and the local city need not be involved. However if private business must compete with taxpayer subsidized or free parking supplied by the city, there is no reason for the private sector to move in and provide the service.
If the off street parking pricing is set at say $3 an hour and the local merchants feel that is too much, they can validate parking charges and pay them themselves, but that is a price they pay relating directly to people coming into their place of business, and not a requirement they must pay if the local government is in charge.
Patrons will drift toward the businesses that validate, and they will prosper, providing ‘free’ parking just like the shopping malls provide ‘free’ parking. Wouldn’t one prefer to stroll along avenues lined with shops, restaurants and clubs each with its own unique tone and flavor, than be stuck in a mall where all the restaurants are the same and often there are two or three of the same exact stores cheek by jowl. I know I would.
Plus small merchants, mom and pop, who provide personal service would be able to afford the small shops that are now boarded up in downtown areas. Parking requirements often prevent them from seeking out these locations.
Hopefully other countries will go slow on minimum parking requirements and take Paul’s advice and not make the same mistakes city planners in the US did 75 or 100 years ago.
JVH
I’ve always tried to just take things as they come and give them the sniff test. If it smells a tad ‘dodgy’ as the Brits would say, it probably is. And usually when people talk in absolutes, they probably don’t know what they are talking about.
- The world ends tomorrow
- All Muslims are evil
- All non-Muslims are evil
- All war is bad
- All politicians lie (well maybe this one is ok)
- All garages lose at least 20% of their revenue
- All dogs bite
- All (Republicans, Democrats) are bad people
- The Science is settled
- All fat people are unhealthy
So you get the idea. Absolutes bring skepticism, at least to me. So when a blogger holds a position and says ‘that’s the way it is,’ I am immediately look for a way to push back. Casey over at Parking Matters and I have been going back and forth over sustainability and the efficacy of climate change and the like. Casey takes the position that this is ‘settled science’ and I take a skeptical approach. I listed some links and he came back with other links and like that. Fair enough. (You can click on “Parking Matters” on the column to the left.)
However I did want to add one more link which I found very compelling. Here is a link to a site from Germany, written by an American, that takes a contrarian position on climate change, and its pretty well thought out. The link is to one entry by a German meteorologist who is fairly blunt in his position. Take a moment to read it. Granted there are arguments on all sides, but to say that the science is settled is a flag to a skeptic like moi.
Here is a quote from the German Meteorologist:
There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.
So, be good stewards of our environment, protect our drinking water and our air, invest where it will make a real difference, and we will have the best possible world in which to live. Invest trillions and destroy entire economies based on panic seems to me to be a fools errand.
JVH
We are running a relatively large ad in Parking Today in June where a major parking operator from the UK is asking for resumes from managers who may be ‘available’ after the completion of the Central Standard merger.
I’ve known British Parking Raconteur Barry Tucker and his Euro Car Parks for years and certainly if anyone can put together a program to fill a void, its Barry. He told me last month at Parkex that he sees an opportunity with the amalgamation of the two huge parking operators in the US and he has the resources to make a difference in the US.
His splashy ad, breaking in June’s PT, reads in part:
Euro Car Parks one of Europe’s largest car parking companies would like to talk with like-minded individuals across the USA who believe that they could bring new business contracts, single or multiple operations to inject into a new US Start Up Parking Business.
Leave it to Barry to not do things by halves. He is aware that there will not only be high quality personnel on the market but also a number of parking locations that could be ripe for the right operation. Barry can be reached, in confidence, through his assistant at toddshaw@eurocarparks.com.
Hmmmmmm
JVH
We are all familiar with “The Chicago Way.” As the Sean Connery character said in the Untouchables –
“They pull a knife, you pull a gun, they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue — That’s the Chicago Way.”
Well Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is playing hard ball with Chicago Parking Meters (CPM). I don’t think that CPM executives need to be looking over their shoulders, but… Seems the company that bought the rights to on street parking revenues for a billion dollars a couple of years ago got to one of the paragraphs that Hizzonner’s predecessor, Mayor Daley, so quickly agreed to. When the city closes a street and makes it impossible for cars to park there, and thus pay CPM their dues, the city must compensate CPM for the lost revenue. The amount now due? $14 million.
So let’s quote the Mayor:
“Just because you send a bill, I’m not gonna ask taxpayers to pay it. There’s a new day here. I don’t know who they think they’re dealing with,” he said.
“First of all, I’m not gonna do it. Second of all, you owe information to justify it. And I don’t even think the information when you’re providing it is accurate. So I sent ’em a letter back. And let me say this: In the envelope wasn’t a check because I’m not doing it. We are not, just because you send a bill in, assuming I’m gonna have the taxpayers fork over money. They may assume that was how it was gonna work. But they’ve got another thing (sic) coming.”
I’m not sure who writes the Mayor’s lines, but it sounds like they could have come right from a Hollywood screenwriter. And from the Chicago Sun Times:
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration allowed the company to determine its own compensation.
Daley, his corporation counsel and two top press aides subsequently joined a Chicago law firm that took in $822,760 in legal fees from City Hall in Daley-engineered deals that privatized the Chicago Skyway, the city’s downtown parking garages and Chicago’s parking meters.
Now, that’s the other Chicago Way.
It’s Spring. New life is in the air. Sheep are having Lambs, Birds fill nests with chicks, new growth is seen everywhere. And parking companies are consolidating. They are melding, they are buying one another and forming larger and more formidable organizations.
We have in the past few months seen FAAC buy Zeag, then Datapark, now Magnetic Automation. Standard in acquiring Central. You can look for a number of European companies purchasing US manufacturers in the near future. I can’t talk about it but you may hear some rumblings in June at the IPI.
So, is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on the wisdom of the purchasing company. We have seen financial institutions buy parking operators only to run them into the ground and have to declare bankruptcy of their “infrastructure” units. We have seen parking companies invest in other parking companies to the great credit of both.
It is important that the buying company keep the best of the new company and only shed itself of the worst. Now is not the time for egos. It’s the time for wisdom. For instance, when NationsBank bought Bank of America they wisely held the Bank of America name even though NationsBank was the purchaser and B of A at the time was failing due to a bad investment in a hedge fund. The board in North Carolina (NationsBank’s home) knew that Bank of America was the name that should survive.
Chrysler is owned by Fiat – the original idea being that Fiat would introduce high mileage European style vehicles to the US. However Fiat quickly found that the money makers in the US were the SUV’s and light truck brands and continued to promote them. In addition it begin to open the European markets to these high profit cars. Plus there are rumors about Fiat’s Ferrari unit using engineering and design technology from Chrysler.
I have been told by people who should know that all parking is local. The long start up time experienced by some European equipment manufacturers expanding into the US related in good part to their lack of understanding of the US parking market. It’s different here than in Europe and parking systems require different features.
Likewise parking operators who move into different markets, usually through acquisition, take a ‘one size fits all’ approach at their peril. While one company wisely kept the management of newly acquired smaller operators in Los Angeles in place and prospered, another decimated the successful management of the companies it purchased in Manhattan and struggled. Local knowledge is extremely important.
Companies are purchased for two reasons, because they are failing, or because they are prospering. Recent purchases in the parking manufacturing sector seem to relate to prospering companies. The surviving boards of directors would do well to determine just what it was that made those companies successful and nurture those factors.
When Amano bought Cincinnati Time they virtually closed the entire product line, however they kept and nurtured Cincinnati’s powerful dealer network, in the end creating a more flexible and responsive organization. They not only removed a competitor from the field of play, they strengthened their distribution network.
Time will tell, of course, but consolidation can bring benefits. Larger companies often have resources to invest in R and D and in service and support that was formerly unavailable to smaller companies. Sometimes they bring together technologies that are synergistic, a merging that would be impossible if the companies remained separate.
Employees that are left jobless as the result of a merger are forced to move on, and in doing so may bring new ideas and innovation to the industry that was stifled in their previous lives. We will see perhaps new small companies springing up that will provide nimble and striking hardware and software to rival their owner’s former bosses. Boutique parking operators that know the local business scene can compete with their larger rivals and perhaps even make both better.
There is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines due to the economic climate. Wise companies are looking for deals and have the cash to act on them. Whether it’s an Italian or Spanish manufacturer, a French or US operator, or a Canadian pension fund, money is there and it’s being used.
Stay tuned – more of this to come.
JVH
Casey Jones, the Chair of the IPI, has my greatest respect. He read my response to his blog about climate change and then proceeded to fire back with fact after fact. Great! Check it out, there is some good stuff over there.
Certainly I can (and I think I did) meet his links and raise them with my links. But that’s not really my point. I’m not going to change people who believe in climate change any more than I am going to change their politics or religion. I would never try.
However, to repeat what I said earlier, sustainability is great. I’m all for it. But it must be tempered with common sense and a dash of reality. Money needs to be invested where it can do the most good. To quote from my previous post:
I like Todd Meyers, keynote speaker at PIE’s, approach — Strive for good stewardship. Spend money on sustainability when it makes a difference. Expensive solar panels and wind farms make little economic sense, but that same money could be spent on better design, research, and ways to move us from one energy system to another without bankrupting society. Remember, it will be the least among us who will suffer when economic times worsen.
The same scientists that Casey quotes would have had us follow the Kyoto accords which would most likely have locked most of the developed world in an economic downturn that would make our current recession seem like a blip on the radar. That does no one any good.
My take is that we must take care that the law of unintended consequences doesn’t force itself on us. We ran roughshod into using ethanol then found that the price of corn skyrocketed starving millions in the third world. Its like those balloon animals, when you squeeze here, something pops out somewhere else.
Bjorn Lomborg is certainly not a skeptic and has global warming credentials. If you want to know about the economic effects of some CO2 reduction solutions, visit his web site — Lomborg.com. Nothing alarmist, no sky is falling, but simply economic facts. Life is full of choices, we need to be sure we chose wisely.
JVH
Italian based FAAC continued its march through parking industry manufacturers by purchasing Magnetic AG. From their News Release:
On April 27th 2012 FAAC SpA completed the acquisition of Magnetic Autocontrol Group, a world player in the domain of vehicle and access control. Headquartered in Schopfheim (Germany) Magnetic Autocontrol is a sound and strong company operating in the high growth market of “vehicle and pedestrian access control” covering the global market through subsidiaries in Germany, Switzerland, Australia, China, Malaysia, Brazil, India and the USA.
This is on the heels of the company’s purchase of Datapark earlier this year and Zeag in mid 2011.
JVH
I got a note from Khristian Gutierrez over at Unparalleled Parking, a new blog that is supported by the gang at Passport Parking. I took a look and what was the first thing I saw — “Sustainability in Parking.” OMG I was ready to unleash my “Global Warming” screed, as Andy calls it, when I decided to break down and actually read the post. Here’s the summation:
Sustainable solutions should be cash flow positive from the start.
Right on!!!!
I then read further and found probably the most cogent discussion of the Standard/Central merger I have ever read. Khristian is a former investment banker and lays out the numbers in the sale so that folks like me can understand them. Give it a look. Full disclosure: They do quote me in their post about Standard/Central so they can’t be all bad
Go Passport — Read the entire post and the rest of their world class blog. That’s Unparalleled Parking —
JVH
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