Boasting low car space numbers a small win, or is it?

A 20% drop in parking spaces over 5 years.  This seems to be the trend in many cities as they extricate themselves from the old 'norm' of a car driven future to the new 'norm' of a public car-less future. 

We all know that the car is a large contributor to greenhouse gases and other pollutants and that the resulting congestion of an ever rising vehicle fleet causes sometimes unending traffic jams, but some common sense still needs to prevail. 

The ostracization of a car driving person just because they want to drive their personal possession into the city each day sometimes boarders on zealotry.  Balance in all things is required.  Auckland city has managed to reduce the number of Council controlled car park spaces by 20% in 5 years, but there is no mention of the private car park operators who may have picked up the slack left behind by the Council.

Essentially, there may have been a transfer of custom from Council to private operators, although I do believe that there has been some reduction in car usage since millioins was spent on upgrading the train system. 

I would love to see the ‘cost benefit’ relationship between the transfer of cars to the private operators and the cost of upgrading the train system.... wouldn't you?



http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10797568

Talk to your Customers or Lose them.

Bloggers to this page may recognise the push for parking companies to get into the Social Network sphere to moderate the conversations about parking and about themselves.  As a business decision it is a no-brainer to have a conversation with your customers as they are having a conversation about you right now and the first parking company to control this mode will make huge inroads in market share.

Using facebook and Twitter are becoming old hat now, but Social Business is still a relatively new field.  There is huge potential in marketing using your social network systems and the mechanics of setting it up in your business are cheap and simple.

The Social Network system is a fast changing world now, with acceptance of the technology now having an increasing penetration into age and social backgrounds.  If you don't talk to your customers, then in the future, someone else may.

Kevin Warwood

http://www.malnormags.co.za/past%20issues/parking%20sa/Pdf/Parking-Jan-2012.pdf

Parking Humour!!

The worst parking spot ever!!!

This is funny.

http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/03/20/worst-parking-spot-ever-video/

Canterbury hospitals set back years by quake

On top of this, there are two hospital car park buildings that are out of action, a total of about 750 spaces gone.

Canterbury hospitals set back years by quake.

LOIS CAIRNS

Quake damage at Canterbury hospitals could see patient services disrupted for several years to come.

The region's hospitals have suffered considerable damage as a result of the ongoing quakes and many key facilities need extensive repair work before they can resume operating at full capacity.

"We've got over 9000 hospital rooms that are damaged," Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) chief executive David Meates said. "There are already 17 buildings that we've vacated. The size and level of repairs will have an impact on services, but we're working through short-term options to try and make sure the community doesn't have any less access to care."

With repairs likely to take some years, Meates is warning the DHB could struggle to meet some of the health targets set by the government.

The performance of district health boards is rated against national targets set by the Health Ministry, with the results published every quarter so the public can see how their DHB is performing.

The latest results from the Canterbury DHB show that despite the upheaval of the last 12 months it has managed to achieve, and even exceed, a number of the targets but Meates has warned that tough times lie ahead and that it would become increasingly challenging to meet the targets.

In recent weeks, the CDHB had been forced to close the operating theatres at Ashburton Hospital and to find a temporary new home for the Child Health Oncology Centre, which had had a flow-on effect on the type of paediatric surgery that could be carried out.

The Parkside block at Christchurch Hospital, which contains 24 operating theatres and undertakes 20,000 operations a year, is going to be a building site for the next 18-24 months as extensive repair work is carried out.

Asked whether the DHB could contract out more of its services, Meates said it was already using most of the private sector's capacity. A number of innovative options for delivering care were currently being looked at and some key decisions were in the pipeline that would significantly impact on how health care services in Canterbury were delivered in the coming years.

"The biggest immediate challenge we've got at the moment is how we deliver services through this winter – that's one of the big challenges we're facing," Meates said.

- © Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-earthquake/6593845/Canterbury-hospitals-set-back-years-by-quake



The Battle of San Francisco.

The Big Supply & Demand parking experiment. 

The SF Park-ing project in San Francisco is turning the on-street parking paradigm on its head with the introduction of simple price adjustments by 'supply and demand'.

'So what?' I hear you say.  This has been the realm of the off-street parking paradigm for decades.  Why is introducing it into the on-street paradigm so news worthy?  The reason it is so important is that the on-street parking area has been the playground of the politician for years.  The parking professional has held sway in off-street car park buildings but the politician has known better in the on-street area. 

This experiment in San Francisco is the parking expert finally getting enough trust from the politicians that they wont lose enough votes to worry them and they will balance any loss with the better goodwill created by a city street that will be able to operate well under normal demand and supply conditions.

If this experiment doesn't work, this methodology will die a very public death and it will never be spoken of again for many years until people forget about SF Park and someone tries again.  This will be a disaster as the politicians will quickly try to wrest control back from the parking professionals again ..... and business as usual.

In SF Park we are starting to see the emergence of high technology, spread to even the furthest reaches of the parking realm, the individual car park bay.  This technology is now starting to support the parking professional in their assertions, as they are now getting the objective data to prove what many have thought by experience and observation, but could never get a budget big enough to prove.

I suspect that this project will give us some very encouraging results, enough for other cities to start to utilise the depth and breadth of technology out there now, to benefit a better understanding of the parking environment.  Before long there will be plenty of evidence out there to build a business case for even the trickiest of cityscapes.

This experiment will be seen not just as the triumph of parking professionals over politicians, but the start of the triumph of objectivity over subjectivity.  That is more important.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/program-aims-to-make-the-streets-of-san-francisco-easier-to-park-on.html

One Year on from the Christchurch Earthquake

Today is Remembrance Day in Christchurch, 22^nd February 2012. 

Today, 1 year ago at 12.51pm, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude, at a depth of a bare 5 km and centred 10 km south-east of the city centre of Christchurch, struck.  This followed the 7.1-magnitude 4 September 2010. 

The effect of the first earthquake was huge as a major earthquake had never occurred ‘under’ the CBD of a major city before.  The September earthquake had the effect of shaking everything, causing deaths, bringing down buildings, primarily of the unreinforced masonry or brick type and shaking to the foundations the local populace. 

 

The February earthquake, 1 year ago today, was more devastating.  It was lower on the Richter scale but much closer to the city, and had a 1.88g ground acceleration, a much more devastating earthquake.  This shake brought down buildings already loosened by the first shake and killed many more people.

 

Then on the 23^rd December 2011, two earthquakes or 5.8 and 6.0 struck again.  This time most of the damaged buildings sustained much more damaged and had more of a psychological affect on the populace.  So spare a thought today for all of those who lost their lives or were injured in the Christchurch earthquakes.

Please remember the people killed in Christchurch over the last two years.

Kevin Warwood

Poor Man’s Performance Parking

We have heard that the ‘new black’ in on-street parking is Performance Parking as espoused by Donald Shoup and we have read about the up sized version of performance parking that is Adaptive Parking as espoused by Paul Barter.  To some local bodies or cities, this is akin to me staring at a Lamborghini through a shop window.  It requires significant investment in infrastructure, marketing and organisational time and effort.  Although held up as the utopia of on-street parking, there are probably a few things we can do to step change our way to Performance and Adaptive Parking or even run that 1960 Ford a little longer before aiming at the Lamborghini.

The general view of parking in the city is one of organic growth around over-crowded or popular activities, such as malls, entertainment, CBD, airports and the like.  These areas start to get restricted time parking, which then moves on to metered parking….. yes I’m generalising.   This creates issues where the city must then decide that it must identify the area, usually reactively by complaint, that requires attention, scope the area and then meter the area as required.  This will curb demand or at least control it.

Metering is the obvious first step in getting to a new paradigm where the prices are estimated and programmed into the machines, and you watch the changes in behaviours to work out if the behaviours are those that would help achieve the City’s growth goals.  This may take a while as you work your pricing systems and responses into the sweet spot of 1 in 8 vacancies on the street.  Unfortunately this generally will not happen as the City executive fear a backlash from the paying public, so parking rates are usually too low, causing little change to congestion and an outcry of profiteering because the public see no demonstrative result from the exercise. It may be best to go straight to a full performance price on street.  The public may be upset (as they were before) but they will SEE a demonstrative change.

 Performance Parking requires clever machinery that has the ability to have its parking rates changed quickly and responsively to the changing, sometimes hourly, demand in the street.  This demand is fed from the in-space units that read the proximity of a vehicle to determine if a vehicle is in the bay or not.  The more occupancy, the higher the fees should change to in response to the demand, to get the 1 in 8 ratio.  Simple really.  Expensive definitely.  So how do you get to a poor man’s version of Performance Parking without the bells and whistles?

Step 1 - I suggest you start a trial where you test for space usage in a typical street.  Meter-Eye or CPT as they are now known, have used a large heavy rubber mat with a detector or Meter-Eye attached to it.  You can throw these mats into typical or strategic spaces and start to collect the data.  It will tell you how many cars parked in the bay and how long they stayed for.  Extrapolate that collective information over the area and you have the first step in the equation, DEMAND.  You also have the second step in the equation, AVERAGE LENGTH OF STAY or DURATION. 

 Step 2 - Monitor the traffic over a number of periods, whether they be day time, as this is the time of worst congestion or in the evening for an area adjacent to evening or event demand.  This will give you the PEAK USAGE and the peak usage will tell you when your parking rates should be at the maximum to achieve your service levels of 1 in 8 vacant spaces.  Be careful here not to miss any double tops or other anomalies in the peak usage.  In hospitals for instance, the peaks are generally twice in a day.  You may have to survey over a period of months to get a complete picture.

Step 3a - If you already have meters on the street, and they allow you to change the rates without too much trouble, then change your rates manually in the most congested blocks, initially for a block of the days that are most congested, i.e. Wednesday to Friday, then change them back from Saturday to Tuesday.  This will introduce Performance Parking on a 'weekly' basis rather than a 'daily' basis.  You have to give up the daily changes until you can afford an investment in the technology that will allow you to do that without incurring wage costs that will wipe out any revenue savings.

Step 3b - If you do not have any meters, then you may want to find the technology that will allow you to amend the rates at your will.  A lot of machines will not allow you to change your charging rates or the supplier will do the change for you but their service is so slow that, in some cases, it takes 2 to 3 weeks to get a simple rate change completed.  These vendors are to be AVOIDED as they prevent Performance Parking.  You may have to go to an RFP to seek competent vendors.  Ensure you reference Performance Parking in your RFP.  This is not the poor mans version but the way to the full blown Performance Parking.

Step 4 -  Set the initial rates.  Most cities appear to have rates that are well under the ideal rates.  They have set rates in the past that still allow circulating in the streets, a clear sign your rates are too cheap.  The level of change in the rates to go up and down by will be difficult to work out.  SF Park is using 50c at a time, but I tend to think that this is a little light as if you move a rate from $3.00 per hour to $3.50 per hour will not deter circulating or behaviour change swiftly enough.

Step 5 - Monitor and amend until you get the ideal occupancy levels.

To summarise the Poor Man's Performance Parking,  find a company that will allow you to use their technology to get a picture of the 'load' on the street over a week (not daily unless you want to go the full blown version), find the demand, Peak, Average Length of Stay, change the charging for parking by the DAY and not the HOUR allowing you to use even cheaper/older/existing equipment, set rates to achieve the required occupancy levels, monitor and adjust.

Kevin Warwood