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President's
Message
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On April 19th we will hold our 1st Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament in Chandler, AZ. We hope this fundraiser will allow us to expand our scholarship program. We are currently allocating $1,000 per year to provide financial assistance to SWPA members to attend a parking conference, training workshop or seminar. Multiple association members have already taken advantage of the program and I encourage you to do the same. Details, including an application, can be found on our website.
On another note, I’m happy to announce that the Board of Directors has recently approved another level of membership. The new category is Frontline/Student and the annual membership dues are $12 for this category. We hope that this will allow organizations to provide some recognition and benefits to employees who fit in this category. We are working on getting this integrated into our web page. If you would like to enroll please contact Gabe Mendez at (480) 890-2613.
We’ll see you on the course next month!
Jim Sayre
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Parking In The
News - Regional
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$1.50 - Doubling downtown parking meter
fees proposed
By Katie Nelson, The Arizona Republic, February 23, 2007
Hold on to your quarters, Tempe drivers. You soon may need more of them to park in the downtown district. Rates at parking meters are soon likely to double to $1.50 an hour. The organization that manages them says it's a necessary increase in order to keep up with parking fee hikes at Arizona State University.
The parking meters are managed by the Downtown Tempe Community, a merchant, business and property owner advocacy group for people and companies with stakes in the downtown area. The last time the DTC raised the rate, with City Council approval, was 1996. Meanwhile, ASU has doubled or tripled the cost to park on campus while decreasing the number of spaces.
ASU meters cost $1.50 for an hour. They were raised to that rate from a dollar an hour in July 2005, said David Argabright, an ASU spokesman. Meanwhile, it costs 75 cents to park for an hour at meters on Tempe land.
Leaders at the DTC said a study they commissioned was combined with a poll by ASU that showed that although an estimated 35,000 vehicles travel to the Tempe campus each day, there are slightly more than 9,000 decal parking spots. It proved that many of Tempe's parking ills are because of ASU students and staff overflow.
"We want them (the ASU community) to be here, use the downtown and consider it their downtown, but we need to make sure the parking spaces are being used appropriately," said Chris Wilson, DTC vice president of operations.
Reaction by residents to the change was mixed.
"So it costs more to park than it does to buy gum?" said Steve Johnson, an Arizona State University student. "That's stupid."
Rajani Chirravuri, a city employee who works in the information technology department, said it could make her less likely to visit downtown Tempe for anything other than work.
"I would love to eat at the nice places here, but I don't come on weekends because of the parking," she said while taking a break from work to get a midmorning snack. "It doesn't seem all that high, but coming and parking with my two children doesn't sound like fun, especially if it's more expensive."
The City Council will decide whether to approve the rate increase at a yet-to-be scheduled meeting.
Meanwhile, other possible changes are on the table for parking downtown. These changes are up for study but could come before the council soon. They include:
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Creating a five-minute grace period for the meters. |
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Making a tiered parking ticket fine structure. For example, if a ticket is paid on the same day it's issued, it could cost $10. Payment within seven days could be $15, while payment within 14 days would be the full $28. |
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Changing time limits of meters so they are longer in places with less demand to make it more enticing to park there, and shorter along streets where meters are used frequently. |
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| Parking In The News - National |
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This parking law is the dumbest law EVER
By Jamie Friar, The Associated Press
Turn out the lights. While the party may not be over, the law has been changed in the central Illinois town of Pekin. For decades, an ordinance required that all cars parked on city streets after dark keep a light on. People complained the law left cars with dead batteries and motorists with short tempers. Many risked a ten-buck ticket rather than having to get a jump start in the morning. In voting to dump the ordinance, Councilman Daryl Dagit says it was time to stop harassing citizens with an outdated law. But some opposed the change, saying the light law helped keep streets clear of cars after dark.
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SWPA -
Association News & Upcoming Events
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Southwest Parking Association's 2007 Scholarship Fund
Golf Classic
Please join the SWPA on April 19th, 2007 for this wonderful fundraising event at the Ocotillo Golf Resort in Chandler, Arizona (www.ocotillogolf.com). There will be a shotgun start for this four-person scramble at 7:00am with registration from 6:00am to 6:45am.
Event Costs: Single - $99, Foursome - $375
Event fees include 18 holes of golf with cart, prizes, tee gifts, full use of resort practice facilities, and Burger Bash Lunch Buffet. Prizes include a $10,000 Hole In One contest.
Registration Information: To register please contact Gabe Mendez at (480) 890-2613 or via e-mail at gabe@downtownmesa.com, please register by April 5th, 2007.
Sponsorship Information: We still have several sponsorship opportunities available for this fundraising event. If you are interesting learning more about the opportunities that still exist please contact Jim Sayre, President & Sponsorship Co-Chair at (602) 543-3206 or Gabe Mendez, Treasurer & Sponsorship Co-Chair at (480) 890-2613.
Southwest Parking Association's 6th Annual
Conference & Trade Show
Please save the date for the 2007 SWPA Annual Conference -
October 2nd - 4th, 2007 at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM
Hotel Information - The online reservation site for the SWPA conference can be found here.
Sponsorship Information: If you are interested in being a sponsor for this event please contact Jim Sayre, President at (602) 543-3206 or Gabe Mendez, Treasurer at (480) 890-2613.
Additional information will be available shortly at www.southwestparking.org.
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Technology News
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RFID: Beyond Wal-Mart and the DoD
By Erika Morphy, TechNewsWorld, March 5th, 2007, Part 1 of 2
Some forward-looking companies are voluntarily expanding their use of RFID because they want to realize the benefits it can offer -- in the supply chain and elsewhere. This is occurring in parking garages, for example. Spain's postal service is another illustration. So are a few deployments on shopping carts at certain grocery stores.
Without a doubt, adoption and use of radio frequency identification (RFID) accelerated dramatically when Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and the Department of Defense gave their respective suppliers marching orders to implement the technology.
However, suppliers for the most part were not happy with the additional costs and resources that had to be diverted into these projects -- expenditures that would not benefit them except in keeping the business.
"Most suppliers that are complying with the mandates are doing it because they have to," Martyn Mallick, Sybase (NYSE: SY) iAnywhere's director of RFID technologies, told CRM Buyer.
Voluntary Expansions
That said, some forward-looking companies are voluntarily expanding their use of RFID because they want to realize the benefits it can offer -- in the supply chain and elsewhere.
This is occurring in parking garages, for example. Spain's postal service is another illustration. So are a few deployments on shopping carts at certain grocery stores. In each of these cases, the technology solves a vexing problem -- and in some cases a seemingly simple one. The use of RFID on shopping carts, for example, saves a grocery store the $200 it would cost to replace it, Mallick noted.
Certainly, RFID's primary ROI (return on investment) lies in the supply chain efficiencies that it can deliver. Part 2 of this series will address how firms are proactively using RFID technology to deliver better products more cost effectively to their customers.
Parking Frustration
Bangalore, India, is notorious for its traffic jams. As the staff at Infosys has learned over the years, the congestion doesn't end once they pull into the company's headquarters. With more than 14,000 employees, it is one of the world's largest software development campuses. The parking garage is a multi-level, six-story building designed for 1,500 cars.
The company's former system had employees show necessary identification to enter and exit the garage, which required stopping the vehicle, rolling down the windows and reaching out to the reader unit to flash the card, explained Girish Ramachandra, a delivery manager who leads research and development and solutions delivery in the RFID solutions practice division at Infosys.
"This would cause bumper-to-bumper back-up during peak traffic," he told CRM Buyer. "Also, the availability of empty slots in each level was gauged manually and at times could get frustrating to drive around to find a place to park," he said.
Turning to RFID
The company decided address the situation by turning to RFID technology as a solution. It realized that a conventional approach -- that is, active RFID -- would work but would not be economically viable because of the higher unit costs and maintenance for battery life.
"Hence, we explored a cost-effective solution that combined EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID passive tags, which has a very low unit cost vis-a-vis active RFID, with sensors and intelligent software," Ramachandra stated.
The system now in place automatically detects cars with passive RFID tags -- in the form of sticky labels -- on the windshield when they are in range of an antenna array. The boom barrier opens once the cars are authenticated. Floor-mounted sensors are used to define use case boundaries for the RFID read point, and also used at each level to count cars to determine empty slot availability, he explained.
Tracking the Mail
In Spain, the postal service has been experimenting with RFID technology to determine where bottlenecks exist in its delivery system, Mallick said.
Using passive RFID tags that are placed on randomly selected letters and packages, the postal service is able to monitor them as they move through the postal system. It is very similar to a "last seen" use of RFID in rail operations -- a reader transmits when a RFID-equipped car passes its station. It is also reminiscent of the system same day delivery services have implemented for their packages, which track a package as it moves from the airplane or truck to the consolidation area then to the next leg of the journey.
The system "allows the postal system a better view into their internal operations as a letter or package moves through the system," he noted.
Unlike a same-day delivery service, it is not tracking an individual letter but trying to detect areas or parts of the operations where the mail can back up or go astray, Mallick noted. "It is a very innovative use of passive tags," he said.
An Educational Setting
Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Ill., believes RFID technology is important enough to have its own RFID training lab and curricula designed to prepare students for RFID opportunities in the workforce -- a rarity among community colleges.
The training facility emulates a factory floor where workers move tagged boxes or pallets through the passageway allowing inventory processing to occur automatically.
"We have entry level classes in literacy, use of middleware as well as a survey of industrial applications," Robert Sompolski, dean of mathematics and technologies at the college, told CRM Buyer.
While the college is focusing on manufacturing applications, it is also exploring the possibilities for homeland security and pharmaceutical deployments, he added.
"We are very interested, for example, in the electronic pedigree activities which pharmaceutical companies are now exploring," Sompolski explained, noting the college has a large pharma-biotech lab.
The college, which also assists in training first responders in various exercises, is interested in tying RFID technology with, for example, hazmat rescue operations, he stated. Related activities would include urban search and rescue and weapons inventory at police and other law enforcement agencies, Sompolski continued.
"The Department of Defense uses RFID to keep track of equipment in the field. Urban search and rescue teams use very similar equipment. They must be able to identify where it is quickly so they can strategize how to use it in an emergency situation. RFID could do that for them," he concluded. |
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