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

On-Street Parking: A Stethoscope to Monitor a City’s Economic Activity and Vitality.

On-Street Parking: The Bellwether of a City’s Economic Activity and Vitality.

I have suspected for some time that there will be a ‘one thing’ that is the parameter that will show the health and economic vitality of a city and it will have something to do with parking.  I was right.

On-street parking, when monitored well (as a lot of cities still don’t do the monitoring bit well enough yet but is improving), can be the bellwether of a city’s economic activity and vitality.  A bold statement when there are so many other possible bellwethers out there and so many more that are more fashionable to monitor, such as inflation, building consents, GDP and others.  But none will give you the activity signal immediacy like on-street parking.

There are some rules that have to be in place first of course, you have to be able to monitor the parking meters occupancies or transactions in real time and it doesn’t even matter if you are still using abstract pricing.

On-street parking gives us the one signal to indicate how large, small or size of change that is occurring in the city and you can see it everyday in your parking stats.  I set up a group of reports from my ITSL metro parking machines to deliver data each morning that I can then compare to a standard norm for parking activity. I have had to spend a number of hours and my teams hours getting the right data as the reports from the machines are limited in scope, but we finally are able to monitor the change in activity everyday.

Think about it.  On-street parking is the recipient of every change that happens within a city.  If a construction site opens up, the car parks and the street are full of contractors and other related activities, so my reports show me that a change is happening and I go and look to see that a building is going up.  If a building is being demolished (likely in Christchurch right now), then a private car park opens up and drains the street with cheaper pricing.  My reports pick up a lack of activity in the street and I go and look to find the new off-street car park open and thriving with cars that were parking on-street.

On-street parking is like the collection of arteries and veins of the body.  They flow around the city picking up any changes to activity or vitality of the city.  Get your stethoscope out, make sure it can monitor what you want it to monitor and listen to the changes.

Kevin Warwood

Mall Parking - people in circulating cars are not shoppers, they’re people circulating in cars!

100% parking performance is difficult to achieve.  To demonstrate this, picture a row of car parks.  Each car park has a car in it.  As a car pulls out, another parks and takes its place, with no queuing, no double parking and no vacancy.  This is the right number of customers that the car park resource can funnel into the mall.  Too many cars, resulting in double parking and circulating, is a system where the managers don’t have the car park resource operating correctly.  Circulating cars are not shoppers, they’re people sitting in circulating in cars!

In 2008, we were running a trial on parking enforcement in a mall in South Auckland.  The mall owner was keen to see how our new ‘camera car’ was working so we started to use the mall as a trial.  One part of the mall had a P90 restriction as it was adjacent to the local Courts, whose customers were parking in the mall.  The rest of the car park had staff dotted around and clogging up the best car parks during the day.  Turning over car parks is one of the best ways of increasing through-put of customers per car park and these two groups of people were lowering the car park turnover and consequently causing a lower number of customers through the mall. 

The car was fitted with two cameras mounted on the roof.  The car would slowly work its way up the aisle and then in 90 minutes, come back to do it again.  The abuse was incredible.  The enforcement numbers climbed dramatically and so did the revenue to the mall owner.  The phone call volumes to the mall management office and the parking turnover climbed as well.  This was a major shift away from the car park being self managing to an active management style.  The system created free car parks for customers but also generated complaints.  In the end, the mall company relented and asked us to slow the enforcement down a bit.

Mall owners have constantly said to me that when I want to raise a price to slow down the flow of cars into a mall car park because there are circulating cars, double parking, rage incidents and property damage occurring due to congestion, then it will somehow hurt the mall’s business.  The approach is to clear out the car park of all those who are not adding value to the mall, to make room for those who are adding value.  That means staff, people who are parking from neighbouring sites and contractors, should be moved on or asked to pay, so as to raise their value to equal that of the shopping customer.  It must be learnt that people circulating in cars are NOT customers,  they are just people circulating in cars in your car park because your car park is not efficiently run and it is acting as a bottle neck to your business.  Clearing out those who add less value is a sensible business decision.  High performance parking in malls is also a sensible business decision.

Parking performance is simple enough to implement, even a poor mans version.  It’s the collection of data to see how well your car park is operating, then analysing the peaks and troughs, dividing your car parks up into zones, the distribution of high value customers to the best spaces and the restriction through price, time restriction or parking equipment to lower value customers to those spaces. 

The best solution is to have exactly the right number of people parked in exactly the right number of car parks, with no circulating, double parking or vacancy …. for as long a period during the day as you can get.  Customers will be happier, retailers will be happier and people may enjoy going to your mall.

By Kevin Warwood, parking specialist

More Revenue - Its a Great Thing for Everyone

I am constantly concerned by the lack of drive for local body politicians in Councils and Health Boards that will not see, nor do anything about, the benefits of paid parking in their institutions. 

The benefits are more revenue to proved more opportunity for improvements, better machinery and equipment and mostly, an ability to drive better behaviours in parking habits.

Hospitals have the best opportunity to improve their ‘lot’ in life as the extra revenue will always help out a hospital, yet they cannot put up a car park building to house the demand for parking from the public, patients and staff.  A parking building pays for itself and doesn’t need to come out of ‘vote health’ at all. Yet one of the biggest gripes about hospitals is a lack of parking.  There are so many ways that technology and modern parking methodologies can support the vulnerable so that they are looked after in a paid parking environment, but these are getting ignored.

Council’s can support the growth of a city, in a small way, by how it organises and operates its parking.  Key support should be given to maximising the use of every bay the Council owns and operates.  It cannot do that with ‘abstract’ parking prices.  You cannot affect positively the activity in an area if you charge the same price in a busy area as a slow area.  We have seen recently Auckland’s response with vast swathes of city linked together with the same price for parking, assuming that occupancy, supply and demand are all similar.  I don’t think so.  It’s the response of politicians getting involved in something they have a passing knowledge of.

These organisations can drive the growth in good habits by adopting a modern parking methodology that allows for a constantly adjusting (within parameters), dynamic network of parking resources that responds to the changing balance of supply and demand in the localised area.  The by-product is increased revenue and that’s a good by-product to have.

Kevin Warwood

Poor Mans Performance Parking II - A Matter of Balance

Like most things in life, balance will always bring most rewards to most people.  Once influences get involved that do not understand the need for balance and they try to manipulate the system to their favour, or move the system out of a lack of or full competence, then the system is out of balance and undue pressures occur. In parking, this will look like queues, circulating traffic, or streets of vacant spaces …. and frustration for all.

My definition of ‘balanced parking’ is as one car pulls out, another pulls in, that is, supply and demand are in balance.

Balanced Parking is a system where all of the levers that a parking resource manager has at their disposal are being used to create a system that favours access for all who require it, has little or no queuing, little or no circulating, little or no vacancy, is well communicated and has the trust to be managed at a low level. 

Levers of a Balanced Parking system are those that affect the supply or demand of the car park resource.  These influencers are things like time-restrictions, number of spaces, proximity of the car park to the demand drivers, lighting, security, safety record, neighbourhood, geography, barrier versus pay & display, lack of acceptance of payments, look & feel, product categories, staff or lack of staff, marketing, technology, enforcement and of course, price. 

Mt definition of supply is car parks, and demand, are cars looking for a car park.

Abstract pricing is inefficient.  We need to understanding that a one size fits all approach creates anomalies and favouritism to a few.  In some cities they have a single on-street price for parking.  The anomalies that this system has created are huge.  In Christchurch where an earthquake decimated the CBD of the city, now has activity beavering away on the west of the city but the east is still to have any new activity appear.  The response to the one size fits all policy there, is that the west is under priced and queues and traffic circulation is occurring and the east has 6 cars per week parking on one street, but the price is still the same.  Abstract pricing does not work.  It must be micro managed.  Technology and new management techniques allow for micro-managing parking operations to a much lower level now.

The city’s resource must include all of its stock, which includes private resources as well.  There is little point in trying to understand and then respond to what the demand is telling you, without understanding the supply.  This is clearly a difficult task, especially if the records of supply have been ineffectually kept over time.  Understanding what is happening in front of you each day will make a lot more sense if you do know your supply.

Occupancy is the ultimate indicator of balance.  We will not be able to get to a true 100% occupancy measure ever for obvious reasons but we should be able to get to a figure that you are comfortable with.  Operating at 90% plus occupancy will require some very efficient technology, such as space detectors etc.  Shoup spoke one space per block as the general figure for occupancy that delivers general balance.  I suggest that if you only have a low tech approach, you may have to put a simple system in place and sneak up on the occupancy figure over time by refining your processes and procedures.

A simple low tech method of getting your occupancy figure and balance, is to use the revenue transposed to time.  This is the system that makes a few assumptions, but is a simple method to use and can be easily set up and understood. 

First, we make the assumption that revenue equals the appropriate time spent parking.  In truth, this is inaccurate for example, people will buy an hours worth of parking and then leave after 50 minutes.  The next person does the same, and on a busy day, you can end up with revenue equalling 120% of the actual time purchased.  Conversely, you can have someone sit in a space using up the time, and only paying when prompted by the visit of an Enforcement Officer.  Occupancy will be at low levels here.  But if we understand these possibilities, then we can be happy with the assumption that revenue equals the appropriate time spent parking.  For our example we will say that the revenue for the day was $21.00.

Secondly, we take the possible revenue that a system allows, for example, if your parking system allows for parking between the hours of 09:00 to 17:00 and the rate is $3.00 per hour, then the possible revenue is $24.00 per day.

Thirdly, we divide the revenue by the possible revenue and our occupancy for the day is $21/$24 = 87.5%.   Our low tech system is close to being in balance or demand equalling demand.

Working out what the ideal number is for your city is difficult as it is unique to your city, so saying 87.5% is the right number is wrong.  One precinct of our city has a hospital in it.  The occupancy, based on revenue, spikes at 7am to 8am, as the staff change over shifts.  The rest of the day is at about 60%.  So do you set about amending your pricing to reflect the 400% before 8am or the rest of the day?  Each precinct and each city is different and needs to be worked out over time.

One of my projects has been to develop a low tech system to understand the balance, divide the city into relevant precincts and to start to collect occupancy data on each precinct to show how supply meets demand in each area.  The results have shown that recommendations for some serous price reductions are called for in some areas, price maintenance in other areas, but no price rises can be justified yet.

The simple system we have implemented can deliver data that can be reviewed at anytime, for anytime that money is being put into machines, and face it, these are generally the only times we need to monitor ‘balance’ anyway.

Kevin Warwood