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Short Parking Stories

July, 2018

Passport Hires VPs of Products and Engineering


Passport announces the hiring of Meredith Cage and Duncan Mapes, the newest staff leaders for the world’s leader in mobile payments in the transportation industry. Cage is the company’s vice president of product and Mapes is the vice president of engineering.


“Meredith’s experience will help us further concentrate on our client-focused product development. Her tactical approach to business will allow Passport to meet our clients’ needs in both the short- and long-term,” said Bob Youakim, Passport CEO. “Meredith’s strong background in leading product teams in fast-growing organizations will help propel Passport in the years ahead. We’re laying the groundwork now for the possibilities to come.”


“Duncan will be a great asset for our engineering team. He is skilled at recruiting, team building, communicating ideas and execution. He’ll work closely with Meredith to get our products out the door,” said Passport Chief Technology Officer, Brad Powers. 


Passport currently has more than 100 employees and has been named one of the fastest growing companies in Charlotte by the Charlotte Business Journal since 2016. The company is now hiring for product managers, product designers, software engineers and many more positions. For more information about these employment opportunities and more, go to passportinc.com/careers.


Mary Smith of Walker Consultants Honored With Lifetime
Achievement Award


Mary Smith of Walker Consultants has been recognized by the International Parking Institute (IPI) with the 2018 IPI Lifetime Achievement Award. The Senior Director of Parking Consulting for Walker Consultants, Smith is widely recognized across the globe as one of the industry’s most accomplished professionals. Smith’s expertise and creativity can be seen in thousands of parking projects across the United States, Canada, Abu Dhabi, China, Dubai, Egypt, Indonesia, Korea, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, and Turkey. As co-author of Parking Structures: Planning, Design, Construction, Maintenance, and Repair, the industry’s most important reference and text book, she has also played an instrumental role in the evolution of the modern parking structure.


“We are extraordinarily proud that Mary Smith is the recipient of the 2018 IPI Lifetime Achievement Award,” said John Bushman, President and CEO of Walker Consultants. “Mary’s leadership as a parking professional is unparalleled and for 40 years she has demonstrated one of the industry’s most thoughtful and creative minds. Mary has left a legacy across the industry that has reshaped parking design and planning throughout the world. This is a well-deserved honor.”


In addition to being an authority on parking design and planning, Smith is also recognized as the industry’s “go-to” person on issues related to vehicle sizes and parking dimensions, parking under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and compliance with the Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). And with the introduction of self-driving vehicles on the horizon, she has become the acknowledged authority on how SDVs will impact parking planning. 


ParkWhiz Acquires Tel Aviv-Based CodiPark


 announced today that it has acquired CodiPark, a Tel Aviv-based company known for industry-leading solutions that deliver a friction-free parking experience. With the acquisition, ParkWhiz will add drive-up mobile payments to its Parking Platform, which powers numerous third party mobile apps, as well as its own ParkWhiz and BestParking brands. 


In addition to having the option of pre-booking parking, consumers will now also be able to simply drive up to a lot or garage, pull a ticket and pay by scanning it in whichever ParkWhiz-powered app they are using. Payment and validation are managed without ever visiting a kiosk or blocking traffic at a gate while fumbling for a credit card or cash.


The company is working collaboratively with parking access control systems and parking operators to offer drivers more seamless ingress and egress options via mobile devices and connected vehicles. The acquisition is part of a broader strategy by ParkWhiz aimed at solving the last mile of connected and autonomous mobility. 


“CodiPark’s world-class technology and inspired engineering talent further enhances the ParkWhiz Platform by delivering more friction-free parking options to drivers and their vehicles,” said Yona Shtern, CEO of ParkWhiz. “It will also reduce the burden on operators of handling cash and improve the flow in and out of their facilities. This is another strategic step ParkWhiz is taking to advance connected mobility and to enable consumers in their platform of choice, whether it be through app, voice or in-dash.”


“ParkWhiz is a highly innovative company that is consistently one step ahead. We are excited to integrate our technology into their Platform, and to work with our industry partners to make parking a more connected and efficient experience for everyone,” said Tavor Ilan, co-founder and CEO of CodiPark.


SKIDATA Relocates NW Operations to Redmond, WA


SKIDATA, Inc. is pleased to announce the relocation of their Northwestern U.S. operations to Redmond, WA. SKIDATA has joined many other technology industry leaders in relocating their regional office to Redmond. The new location at 8620 154th Avenue NE brings many new functions and features to the company, including a larger training center, conference and meeting space, as well as a full product line “experience” where customers and trainees will have the opportunity to interact with and learn about our state of the art Access and Revenue Control Equipment. 


SKIDATA expanded operations into the northwest when they acquired their former distributor Protection Technologies in August of 2016. They previously maintained their office in Bellevue, Washington until the move on February 1st of this year. This move is just one part of a very busy year for SKIDATA. The company is currently embarking on the largest merger in its history with the integration of Sentry Control Systems – a transition that will see the company literally double in size to a team of more than 350 throughout the United States! All this just one year after parent company SKIDATA AG celebrated their 40th year in business around the world.


Damon Kessler, Regional Manager Northwest, shared his enthusiasm, “We are very excited to have this new space. The ability to showcase our solutions and the capacity to have a training center illustrates our commitment to our customers in the region.” 


As the company continues to grow and reshape itself as a leading sales and service organization in the access control industry, the corporate culture also continues to evolve. The new office is part of SKIDATA’s push to get closer to the customer in an effort to better understand their needs and provide custom solutions. Other recent office improvements and moves include local sales and service locations in New Brunswick, New Jersey; San Francisco, California; Dallas, Texas; St. Louis, Missouri; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. SKIDATA is dedicated to continue to be the largest access control provider in the U.S. and a leader in service. 


Managing Curb Activities To Reduce Congestion


PTV Group collaborated with the International Transport Forum (ITF) to model congestion and operational impacts of new curb use scenarios related to ride share services in Lisbon’s Central Business District (CBD). Using their traffic modelling and simulation software, PTV Group analysed curb-specific impacts that stem from a growing uptake of ride share services to help public policy define potential reallocation strategies. The results, published in the report “The Shared Use City: Managing the Curb”, show that as ride share adoption increases an overall reduction in traffic delays can be expected, but only when proper management of curb-side activities is implemented.


The report considers the competing activities that occur along city streets and how increased levels of shared mobility, as well as urban logistics and increases in single parcel deliveries, are adding to curb-side congestion. Therefore, the need to manage all competing activities, through efficiently positioned and managed pick up and drop off zones, are key to maintaining smooth traffic flow.


Freer traffic movement and less delays


The findings show that if no dedicated curb space is provided for pick up/drop off, the vehicle flow capacity reduces by up to 50%, due to the effect of double parked ride share vehicles causing congestion. However, the introduction of dedicated pick up/drop off curb-space reduces delays to traffic flow in the Lisbon CBD by up to 20%.


Prioritizing the allocation of curb space to ride share activities away from existing car parking spaces could result in lost car parking revenue for the city. However, analysis with the microsimulation tool, PTV Vissim, demonstrates that pick up/drop off spaces have the potential to service over 90 transactions in an hour, compared to Lisbon’s CBD, which has one transaction per space every five hours. Implementing pricing mechanisms is therefore an important aspect to consider, whereby passengers will pay a premium to be picked up or dropped off at busy locations. This helps manage congestion, but also allows cities to recoup losses in on-street parking revenue. Whilst allocating dedicated curb space is not feasible in all urban areas, the study highlights how the effective management of curb space best supports the integration of large scale ride share services on urban streets.


Three-phase analysis


To determine how increased levels of shared mobility services impact curb-side activity and traffic congestion, different consumer ride share adoption scenarios were assessed with and without managed curb side space. Data extracted from the adoption scenarios provided an insight into what transitioning to new mobility services may look like.


The analysis adopted a three-phase modelling solution to ensure a realistic representation of traffic conditions with ride share services. Firstly, ride share trip requests obtained from the Lisbon mobility data was fed into PTV MaaS Modeler, which optimized the dispatching and routing of the vehicle fleet to individual person trip requests. 



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