Parking Nation Tradeshow & Exhibition- CALL FOR ABSTRACTS – Last Minute Reminder!

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS – Last Minute Reminder!

Parking friends,

The Parking Nation Exhibition’s CALL FOR ABSTRACTS is about to close.

On behalf of Parking Nation Exhibition 2014 (PNX14) team, we would like to invite you to submit abstracts for oral presentation at PNX14 to be held at the Chateau-on-the-Park Hotel, Riccarton, Christchurch on 27-29 May 2014.

Parking Nation will be attended by all of those in parking in councils & municipalities, commercial operators, airports, hospitals, universities and campuses, property, agents, service contractors, parking equipment, technology, hotels, transport & traffic engineers and planners, parking consultants, enforcement, mobile phone technology suppliers, design & construction, lighting suppliers, printing, tender contractors and retail & mall operators.

TOPICS

The following topics are some of the themes that will be addressed at PNX14. However other relevant topic subjects may be put forward by presenters:

• License Plate Technology
• Lighting & LED Technology
• Electric Vehicle in a modern parking world
• Sensor Technology & guidance systems
• Smart Cities – data integration
• Tech camp
• Successful parking RFPs & Tenders
• And more

 The closing date for abstract submissions is Friday, 7^th March 2014.

PREPARING YOUR ABSTRACT

• Abstracts must not exceed 300 words, excluding title, authors and institutions. The abstract should include the essential technical qualities of the paper. No acknowledgements or references are required with the abstract. 
• Abstracts may include a simple table or figure.
• Must include a succinct overview of the intent and purpose of the oral or poster presentation.
• No specific abstract format is required.  The key requirement is to give the organising team a clear understanding of what would be presented.
• Prior experience in speaking should be noted.

To submit your abstract, please go to www.parkingnation.co.nz and go to the link to attach the Abstract.

Please circulate this information as widely as possible and encourage your colleagues to submit abstracts for PNX14.

If you have any queries on the above, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Starting All Over Again - Parking After an Earthquake

Hi all,

I promised I would include a video of my presentation to the Australian Parking Convention here so here it is.  Only its me doing it from home and not from the convention.

 

I have attached a couple of the videos I used as well to give you some perspective and context to what we are trying to achieve in Christchurch.

This video of the devastation of Christchurch is eye opening.  http://youtu.be/zFk7KnRALXk

The vision of the new Christchurch gives us some faith that the future is positive, even CERA is starting to understand how important parking is to a city in rebuild mode.

Its simple, parking supports 70% of all activity in a city.  To have parking support the rebuild of a city, parking must support 'economic growth or economic activity', to achieve that, parking must aim at full 'utilization' of parking spaces, of which the right fit of a 'modern parking methodology' and a 'modern parking technology' is vital.

Understanding what you have happening in the city is imporatnt.  You must be able to monitor the activity before you can respond with prices and restrictions in parking.  In Christchurch we develpoed a heat map of the activity.

I hope you all enjoy the video, but be aware its 30 minutes long so make a coffee to view it.

Happy holidays.

Kevin Warwood

The Frog That Went To Town - Modern Parking Technology meets Old School Enforcement

So what happens when a parking service grows organically over many years and loses sight of what they are meant to be there to do, what results they are meant to provide and who they are meant to serve?

This is an interesting group of questions because a lot of smaller, provincial size Council's or city's operations have grown up organically and not really understood why they are there now and what they are supposed to be providing for the town.

Blog readers will have understood my dismay at the New Zealand Parking Association conference this year, where every single session was an enforcement session. Not a single session looking to offer education on parking operations. This example and the article below in the Manawatu Standard (central North Island of NZ), clearly start to show a picture of cause and effect. If no one in Council understands the questions above, then enforcement is merely an unguided activity due to annoy everyone and serve no one.

I do suspect that there are a lot of these types of organically grown organisations around the world now, as modern parking technologies clash with old school enforcement models. My wish here is that Councils and cities recognise that this might refer to them and that they seek the help that is available through education or through consultants. If they don't, I believe they will eventually fall to pressure from retailers and the public, to find a solution fast, and will end up with a system that serves no one.

Parking systems must be created by design, especially with modern parking technology, as new technology exposes a lack of modern parking methodologies being employed, as in Manawatu. The first step is to understand why you have parking in the first place, adding modern parking methodologies and a suitable technology mix to match those methodologies and then tailoring the enforcement programme around that. Let me show you;

1.      Why have Parking? - To help support economic activity and its benefits.

2.      How does it do that? - By increasing parking utilisation and efficiencies.

3.      How do you increase utilisation of the resource? - By using a modern technology mix and modern parking methodologies.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are all about parking operations, not enforcement. Parking enforcement is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, so to speak, and the level of enforcement is a result of the level of mis-match between the two. We need a good efficient enforcement team and their model must support parking operations, but it should not run parking. That’s cart before the horse stuff.

The Goal of Parking

Parking utilisation is having every single car park used as much as possible and as long as possible. This is the getting the right amount of cars in the right amount of spaces. Congestion, circulating, queuing, rage incidents, property damage and conversely vacancies are two sides of the same coin, inefficient operations. Most of the towns and cities talked about here have these symptoms.

To improve utilisation you must have the right mix of technologies to suit the chosen methodology, that is technology that allows you to micro-manage your parking to target the local activity. Organic systems don’t fit here and must be improved to deliver what the city or town demands, being improved economic activity, support for local businesses and an efficiently run parking system, with parking enforcement concentrating on behaviour change.Frog Parking is world class technology and it seems a shame to have it maligned by attaching it to an organically grown system.

 

Kevin Warwood

Don Sandbrook, CEO Frog Parking


http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/7962876/Parking-saga-The-other-side


Please note: Views expressed in this blog are personal.

13th Australian Parking Convention

Hi all,

This time next week will be the 13th Australian Parking Convention's second day. 

I am speaking on Monday on the topic, The Christchurch CBD is Gone – Now What?  This is a presentation on the plans created to re-build the city's parking operations after an earthquake, and what we are trying to achieve by these plans and goals. 

I will be covering areas such as, 

·         The contribution parking can make to rebuilding a city

·         How a parking system should include all resources, public, private, on-street and off-street

·         How parking is both a barometer and bellwether

·         How modern parking technologies and methodologies can allow you to micro-manage your parking more and why this is good

·         How micro-managing parking is the future, as it allows managers to respond to the needs of the local area

I hope you can all make it.  See you there.

Cheers

Kevin


Http://www.parkingconvention.com.au/

Time For Choice from our Parking Conference

For many years I have been going to parking conferences and I look forward to them as well.  In many parts of the world and in many of them I have been astounded at the changing technologies that are shaping how we do things in the parking world, different companies that have come and gone and the wide range of methodologies that have been worked and re-worked (or even re-packaged) in an attempt to do things better. 

The common theme through all of these conferences, admittedly run by professional conference companies, is that they are wide in variety, topics and speakers.  The New Zealand Parking Conference, in Dunedin this year, has to be the narrowest of scope of programmes I have seen in a long time.  This is a programme entirely focussed on Enforcement, while Operations, Technology, Management, Valet, Marketing have been left out in the cold and untouched.

Look at the up coming British Parking association Conference programme on 27^th September 2012,

• The Parking Charges Debate
• Sustainable Towns
• Town Teamwork
• Parking Strategy
• Understanding Parking Behaviour
• Innovation and Technology Focus
• Maximising the Evening and Night Time Economy
• High Streets of the Future
• Accessible Towns
• Understanding and Exceeding Customer Expectations

This is a great programme and it covers all aspects of parking, except Enforcement, which is covered by the speakers they have.

Look at the October 15^th National Parking Association convention’s programme.  They run a choice of six tracks to mix and match from,

• Certified Parking Professional (CPP) - education
• Peak Performance - Smart Cities: The Next Wave in Transportation and Parking Management
• Technology - Smart Cities: The Future of Citywide Parking Management.
• Finance - Driving Performance: The Realities of Revenue Control, People, Process & Technology
• Valet - How To Deliver White Glove Service to Meet Rising Front Line Service Expectations
• Management & Operations - The Big 3: Revenue, Maintenance & Management

Nothing in here about Enforcement but they also cover topics in Airport and Hotel parking and have a valet Olympics for fun.

NZPA programme is,

• WOF & Licensing Enforcing
• Kerbside Discretions/Interactions/Explanations
• CCS Disability Action - update on new mobility cards
• Ministry of Transport Updates
• History of the Number Plate

I am thinking that the NZPA conference is so narrowly focussed that it has become a Council only jaunt and since Councils have a small market share, in the bigger cities anyway, they ignore the majority of the car parking market.

I hear that there is a Healthcare Parking conference planned for Christchurch in December this year, to coincide with the re-build of Christchurch.  Maybe there will be specialist conferences pop up to fill the large gap left by NZPA.  There is already an airport conference for Australasia that has a parking component in it, as parking is a huge part of airport operations these days.  Other specialist conferences should be welcomed as the topics mentioned above must be covered regularly in New Zealand.

I think there is a need for a Parking conference in New Zealand, that will cover all of the topics of parking, offer some education and give participants, and that means the private sector as well, a well earned choice of topics.  This will only create a closer and better performing sector that will deliver better and more consistent standards to the public of New Zealand.

Kevin Warwood