It’s a new year... have you kept your resolutions? For many, the New Year provides an opportunity to start over. The Southwest Parking Association took some big steps in 2006 and we are now looking at the year ahead. While we won’t be “starting over”, we have made a resolution to continue to progress. 2007 will be an exciting year! Here are some things for you to look forward to:

• Spring Training Program. (Feb. 23, 2007 in Las Vegas)
• 1st Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament. (April 19, 2007 in Chandler, AZ.)
• 6th Annual Conference and Trade Show. (October 2-5, 2007 in Albuquerque, NM.)
• Fall Training Program. (TBD)
• International Parking Institute Conference and Exposition. (May 20-23, 2007)

I would encourage you to take part in the progression of our association this year. The marketing, membership, and conference committees are always looking for help. Your involvement in these committees will provide an opportunity to build a stronger networking pool, to further develop as a professional, and certainly to add something to your resume. If you’re interested please contact me and I will happily send you in the right direction.

I look forward to the year ahead!

Jim

Valet Parking Landing At Airports
By Roger Yu, USA Today, January 24th, 2007

Big airports are adding a service for time-pressed travelers: valet parking.

More than a half dozen, including Miami, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Reagan Washington National and Los Angeles, have added valet service in the last year.

Cleveland, Atlanta and others are considering it. Some airports offer extras with it: car wash and detailing, filling up the gas tank and inflating tires.

With a record number of passengers, airports are adding the service to gain revenue, differentiate themselves from competitors and provide travelers with a time-saving convenience.

"It's good for consumers," says Mark Wildman, marketing executive of The Parking Spot, which recently introduced its first on-airport valet service at Dallas/Fort Worth. "People are inevitably running late when catching their flight." Airports benefit because they can pack cars into smaller space as attendants arrange them without concerns about blocking someone in, Wildman says.

Charges for the service and parking typically run $20 to $30 a day. Some airports, including John Wayne in Orange County, Calif., Cincinnati, Oakland and Columbus, Ohio, offer curbside service. For $23 a day, John Wayne passengers drop off and pick up their car at a designated spot on the departure level of the main terminal. At most airports, travelers have to park at a valet lot and walk or take a shuttle ride to the terminal.

At the end of a trip, many airports allow passengers to phone ahead to have the car ready. At Fort Lauderdale, attendants who have been provided returning flight information will place the car in "the get-ready lanes" for faster exit. The airport, which already sells car washes, is considering adding oil changes and dry-cleaning service.

Valet parking is ideal for women traveling alone and for the elderly since they're met by attendants on arrival and can be watched into the terminal, says Greg Meyer, a spokesman at Fort Lauderdale airport.

Miami's valet attendants use wireless handheld devices that issue parking stubs and take digital photos of any existing damage to the car. Its valet lot also has a kiosk where customers can have the bar code on the parking stub scanned to calculate payment.

Steve Nesterak, an executive of a real estate firm in Denver, says he uses valet parking at Denver International to deal with the shortage of spaces during ski season. But, he says, the valet lot is also frequently full, forcing him to search for a regular spot.

Upcoming Events

Southwest Parking Association’s Front Line Staff Training - Winter Seminar

What: Conflict Resolution Training presented by Kim Jackson, CAPP, Executive Director - International Parking Institute

Conflict resolution training, if successful, needs to focus on the particularly challenging area of “attitudes and values.” Many times, it is not a matter of employees not knowing what to do, but rather a question of employees not doing what they already know how to do.

When: February 23, 2007 8am – 4pm
Where: University of Nevada Las Vegas – International Gaming Institute, Las Vegas, NV

Registration Cost:
   SWPA Member: $50
   Non-Member: $65

Additional Information: Check the SWPA website, www.southwestparking.org, for registration information or contact the association at: swpa1@southwestparking.org.

Thank you to our Sponsors!

Hotel Information:
Amerisuites - 800-246-8357, www.amerisuites.com
Embassy Suites - 702-795-2800, www.embassy-suites.com
Terrible’s Hotel & Casino – 702-733-7000, www.terribleherbst.com
Hard Rock Hotel - 800-HRD-ROCK, www.hardrockhotel.com/home.php

Southwest Parking Association’s Scholarship
Fund Golf Classic

Save the Date: Save the Date: April 19th, 2007, Ocotillo Golf Resort in Chandler, Arizona. Additional information regarding this great event will be available shortly at the SWPA website - www.southwestparking.org.

Sponsorship Information: 
If you are interested in being a sponsor for this fundraising event please contact - Jim Sayre, President, Sponsorship Co-Chair, (602) 543-3206, or Gabe Mendez, Treasurer, Sponsorship Co-Chair, (480) 890-2613.

Book your sponsorship soon so you don’t miss out on the best opportunities. We thank you for your continued support.

Paving the Way to Sustainability

Once every so often we are given the opportunity to balance the demand for development with the ability to preserve our natural resources. That opportunity presented itself when it came time to resurface a small metered lot just west of the ASU Art Museum.

In a partnership with the National Center of Excellence on SMART Innovations for Urban Climate and Energy (NCE), Parking and Transit Services converted surface Lot 9 from asphalt to pervious concrete.

Pervious concrete allows for much faster water drainage. Above, the portion of ordinary concrete in Lot 9 is much wetter than the pervious concrete in the foreground.

Pervious concrete is a mix of course aggregate, cement, water and little to no sand. With more openings and voids in its surface texture, it allows water to flow more easily through it, leading to faster drainage and an increased ability to recharge groundwater aquifers.

“It looks like a Rice Krispie material in a way,” said Kamil Kaloush, co-director of the NCE.

Pervious concrete also contributes to enhanced air quality, sheds heat much faster than regular pavement, and helps reduce the urban heat island effect. The new concrete is anticipated to decrease long-term maintenance costs as well.

The “New American Parking Lot” project has drawn a great deal of interest throughout the region. Over 50 people from various state and local agencies showed up, in the rain, to watch a demonstration in January. Pervious concrete has been used in more humid climates for several years, but this is the first significant parking project to utilize the material in Arizona. The NCE was looking for an area to test some designs and contacted PTS about paving with the eco-friendly pavement at the Tempe campus. ASU now serves as an example for local governments and agencies interested in applying sustainability to everyday life, and PTS is proud to participate in that environmental stewardship.

Robot Parking Garage To Open In New York
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer, January ‘07

Would you trust a robot to park your car? The question will confront New Yorkers in February as the city's first robotic parking opens in Chinatown.

The technology has had a good track record overseas, but the only other public robotic garage in the United States has been troublesome, dropping vehicles and trapping cars because of technical glitches.

Nonetheless, the developers of the Chinatown garage are confident with the technology and are counting on it to squeeze 67 cars in an apartment-building basement that would otherwise fit only 24, accomplished by removing a ramp and maneuver space normally required.

A humanoid robot valet won't be stepping into your car to drive it.

Rather, the garage itself does the parking. The driver stops the car on a pallet and gets out. The pallet is then lowered into the innards of the garage, and transported to a vacant parking space by a computer-controlled contraption similar to an elevator that also runs sideways.

There is no human supervision, but an attendant will be on hand to accept cash and explain the system to baffled humans.

Parking rates will be competitive — about $400 monthly or $25 per day, according to Ari Milstein, the director of planning for Automotion Parking Systems, the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Stolzer Parkhaus, which has built automated garages in several countries overseas and in the United States for residents of a Washington, D.C., apartment building.

Another company had built the only other public robotic garage in the United States, the one with a checkered past.

Built in 2002 across the river in Hoboken, N.J., with 314 spaces for monthly rentals only, the garage dropped an unoccupied Cadillac Deville six floors in 2004 and a Jeep four stories the following year. Early last year, a malfunction that went unrepaired for 26 hours trapped cars inside.

This summer, the city of Hoboken tried to wrest control of the garage from its builder, Robotic Parking Systems Inc. of Clearwater, Fla., and an ensuing court battle shut it down for two weeks, trapping some cars inside. The garage is closed until Thursday as the city replaces the controlling software, city spokesman Bill Campbell said.

Dennis Clarke, the chief operating officer at Robotic Parking, acknowledged the operational problems, but said the garage has operated with "99.99 percent efficiency." He called the 26-hour outage a freak incident, where two redundant sensors failed at the same time and a maintenance crew failed to follow company policy in not repairing them right away.

The company's current generation of garages is much improved, Clarke added.

"Software-wise, machinery-wise, everything that has ever given us a problem has been designed out of the system," Clarke said.

Automotion's Milstein said that in the 11 years Stolzer Parkhaus has built robotic garages, only one car has been damaged, in an incident involving a half-set parking brake. Even that loophole has now been eliminated with the addition of an additional sensor, he said.

"It is a complete virtual impossibility that damage can occur," he said.

If the garage lives up to that claim, it would certainly be a safety record unheard of for traditional garages, where not only cars but people get hurt and even killed. Even the Hoboken garage may not look like a disaster by comparison, though it's rare for a conventional garage not to give your car back.

The two loading bays in the Chinatown garage are outfitted with enough laser and radar sensors to make Fort Knox jealous. They sense if the car fits on the pallet (it's large enough for medium-sized SUVs) and look for movement to determine whether the driver and passenger have left the car. When the car is properly parked on the pallet, the driver is told to exit the car and leave the bay, and a door closes behind him or her before the pallet descends into the garage.

When the driver comes back for the car, the underground system goes into motion to retrieve it. Because it parks cars two deep in some slots, it sometimes needs to shuffle cars around to retrieve others. The software figures all that out.

In a touch worthy of Inspector Gadget, an underground turntable turns the car around before it's lifted to the surface, ensuring that it's returned facing out into the driveway, eliminating any need to back out of the garage.

Clarke at Robotic Parking Systems said demand for robotic parking is booming in the country after long lagging behind other developed countries.

The company just finished shipping a 900-car garage to Dubai and signed a deal for a 1,200-car garage for the United Arab Emirates, is working on several U.S. projects, including one 229-car garage at the Hollywood Grande resort in Florida.

"Demand is such that they're really stacking up on us," Clarke said. "What seems to have happened is that the developers have been wanting this for a long time, but the architects have been lagging behind. Architects use the same plans over and over, particularly when it comes to parking in a garage."