Blogs

What’s Really Happening Inside Your Parking Payments System? By Bill Widis

By IPMI Blog posted 4 days ago
By Bill Widis: Payments power nearly every part of the modern parking experience, from kiosks and gates to mobile apps and permits. But for many parking professionals, what’s happening under the payments hood remains a black box. And that’s not ideal, because even when everything appears to be working, hidden inefficiencies, missed revenue opportunities, and unnecessary costs can quietly add up. Payments aren’t just a back-end function — they directly impact traffic flow, customer satisfaction, and bottom line. The reality is that most parking environments evolve over time, often resulting in a patchwork of systems, processors, and configurations. Without ...

From Data to Mobility: Lessons from My First IPMI Conference By Chelsea Biltoft

By IPMI Blog posted 5 days ago
By Chelsea Biltoft: Attending my first International Parking & Mobility Institute Conference has reinforced one idea above all else: parking is no longer just about managing spaces—it’s about creating a complete mobility experience. Working in university parking, I spend much of my time analyzing data from permit systems, mobile payment platforms, occupancy sensors, and enforcement software. Before attending IPMI, I viewed these systems as separate tools. This week challenged that perspective. I learned how agencies across the country are connecting data to improve operations, enhance the customer experience, and make more informed decisions. One topic ...

What We Learned at IPMI 2026 By Peter Richards

By IPMI Blog posted 9 days ago
By Peter Richards: The International Parking & Mobility Institute (IPMI) Conference & Expo is always one of the highlights of the year. IPMI brings together parking operators, consultants, universities, technology providers, municipalities, and mobility professionals from across North America to share ideas, debate challenges, and discuss where the industry is heading. The bonus was that Milwaukee was such a cool city! This year, we were represented both as a speaker ( Peter Richards ) and exhibitor with Parkalytics . Between sessions, booth conversations, and hallway discussions, a few themes stood out. Event Parking Is Its ...

Parking Is Never About the Cars, It’s About the People: Learnings From My First IPMI Conference By Michele Lim

By IPMI Blog posted 10 days ago
By Michele Lim: I walked into my first IPMI conference not entirely sure what to expect. Being a newbie to the parking industry, I had been a bit tongue-in-cheek when I touted to my friends that I’d be going to this conference “IPMI is huge in the parking industry, trust me guys.” But I walked out with a notebook full of ideas, a handful of new connections, and a genuine question: does the parking industry have some kind of anti-ageing secret? More on that in a moment. The soundbite I loved the most was from one of the sessions I went to: “parking is never about the cars, it’s about the people” – getting people where they need to go, reliably ...

The Quiet Dance at the Front Line of Parking By Lisa Copeland, PTMP

By IPMI Blog posted 11 days ago
By Lisa Copeland, PTMP: In every parking operation, there is a subtle but essential choreography unfolding each day—the work of customer service representatives. These professionals perform a delicate dance between policy and empathy, structure and flexibility, enforcement and understanding. Parking, by nature, can create tension. It touches something personal: people’s time, mobility, and, importantly, their wallets. Paying for permits or receiving citations often places customers in a defensive posture before a conversation even begins. In that moment, the customer service representative becomes the human face of the organization—stepping into interactions ...

Dynamic Pricing: The End of Parking Reservations? By Philip Olivier

By IPMI Blog posted 24 days ago
By Philip Olivier: Dynamic pricing is transforming the parking industry, but what happens to the humble reservation when rates change by the minute? For most operators, a “reservation” has always been a simple pre-purchase: a customer pays a fixed rate and parks later. That model made sense in a world of static pricing. But as AI-driven pricing engines, real-time occupancy data, and gateless systems become the norm, selling a fixed-price booking days or weeks in advance creates real tension. Operators must choose: honor the original rate and leave revenue on the table or embrace fully dynamic pricing and risk alienating customers who value certainty. Other ...

Parking Structures Are Infrastructure. We Should Treat Them That Way. By Jeremiah Vanderlaan

By IPMI Blog posted 06-03-2026
By Jeremiah Vanderlaan: Parking structures are often approached as if they are just simplified buildings. I think that is the wrong starting point. They may look like buildings. They have columns, floors, stairs, elevators, lighting and sometimes a facade. But in practice, they behave more like exposed infrastructure. When we confuse these two categories, we underestimate what the building needs to endure. A parking structure has more in common with a bridge than with a typical occupancy building. Office buildings are designed to keep weather out. Parking structures must perform when the outside inevitably gets brought in. Cars carry water, snow, ice, salts, ...

From Guesswork to Ground Truth: The Impact of Data on Parking Decisions By Dan Mathers

By IPMI Blog posted 06-01-2026
By Dan Mathers: Quality parking data has become essential for improving driver experience, enabling wayfinding, informing policy, and ensuring efficient operations. Even helping drivers find available parking requires reliable, real-time data. As cities and parking operators face growing pressure to manage curb space, optimize revenue, and support broader mobility goals, the focus has shifted from whether to use data to what type of data is needed. Not all parking data delivers the same value. Its usefulness depends on three key dimensions: granularity, cadence, and accuracy. Granularity refers to how detailed the data is, from facility-wide summaries ...

It’s Not a Curb Management Problem. It’s a Curb Access Problem. By Brooke Krieger, MPA

By IPMI Blog posted 05-26-2026
By Brooke Krieger, MPA: The parking industry is still optimizing for a problem the curb has already outgrown. For years, we’ve focused on curb management, organizing space, setting time limits, and enforcing payment. That approach made sense when the curb was primarily used for parking. That is no longer the case. Today, the curb supports a growing mix of uses. Pickup and dropoff, delivery, micromobility, transit connections, robotics, and autonomous vehicles already operating in cities today. Each depends on access to the same limited space, often at the same time. This is not a management problem. It is an access problem. Parking Is No Longer the Center ...

Transit Can Be a Key Element Even for Certain Road & Bridge Projects By Mark Hairr, PTMP

By IPMI Blog posted 05-18-2026
By Mark Hairr, PTMP: The Cape Fear Public Transportation Authority (dba Wave Transit), in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and the Wilmington Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO), provided much needed relief to southeast North Carolina with expanded microtransit service and Transportation Demand Strategies (TDM) during the recent temporary closure of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge for a preservation project. This bridge is a primary transportation corridor between the City of Wilmington and adjacent Brunswick County with an average daily vehicle count of more than 65,000 vehicles going back and forth, and its temporary ...

Beyond the Ticket: Unlocking Ancillary Revenue from Every Customer By Victoria Wallace

By IPMI Blog posted 05-13-2026
By Victoria Wallace: If your parking lot is full, the revenue is rolling in, right? Not necessarily. Full occupancy doesn’t automatically translate into maximum revenue. In today’s environment, rising costs, changing mobility habits, EV growth, and increasing customer expectations mean that volume alone isn’t enough. Instead of asking: How can we add more spaces? The smarter question is: How much more value can we generate from every customer who parks with us? All too often, parking is treated as a single transaction. A space is sold. A customer is issued a ticket. Sometimes the customer returns to park with you again. Sometimes they don’t. ...

Zoom Wasn’t Invented Over Zoom By Jeff Pinyot

By IPMI Blog posted 05-12-2026
By Jeff Pinyot: I wonder if Orville Wright would have ever invented flight if his brother Wilbur wasn’t by his side in their bike shop in Dayton, OH. Of course, they are both credited with the first sustainable flight flown over the Outer Banks of Kittyhawk North Carolina. Success comes mostly through failure. The Wright Brothers knew plenty of failure. In the same room, the boys sketched, dreamed, tinkered and collaborated one of the most important and significant inventions the world has ever conceived. The boys won the Race for Flight. There isn’t a bit of a chance that it would have happened over a Zoom call. From a garage in San Jose to a dorm room ...

Hitting Reset: How Royal Oak Is Rebuilding Its Parking Program By Allison von Ebers

By IPMI Blog posted 05-11-2026
By Allison von Ebers: Like many cities, Royal Oak didn’t suddenly end up with a complicated parking system. Over time, well-intentioned upgrades, new policies, and layered technologies created a program that no longer matched the way people experience parking day to day. What was meant to make parking easier had, in some cases, made it more confusing for customers and more cumbersome for staff. Rather than continuing to patch individual issues, city leadership deliberately chose to step back and reset the program with a long-term view. That reset started with a simple shift in perspective: parking isn’t just about where a car sits. Parking shapes how easy ...

May/June’s Ask the Experts – More Great Answers!

By IPMI Blog posted 05-07-2026
We received so many great responses to the May/June 2026 question that we couldn’t fit them all in one place! Click here to see the responses featured in Parking & Mobility magazine , then keep reading for even more insights. What does a “resilient revenue model” look like for parking, transportation, and mobility organizations in 2026? @Katherine Beaty , PTMP, CEO/President, Beaty Solutions A resilient revenue model in 2026 assumes parking demand will continue to change and is designed for that reality rather than fighting it. It monetizes access and the curb, adjusts pricing as behavior shifts, and is willing to let go of ...

2026 ISV Playbook: Three Imperatives By Kim Molinaro

By IPMI Blog posted 05-05-2026
By Kim Molinaro: ISVs can navigate change and add value in the payments arena by focusing on a few key goals Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) face a web of new challenges in facilitating payments: Merchant expectations are rising, payment environments are getting more complex, and software platforms are under pressure to deliver more connected, secure and value‑driven commerce experiences. These challenges require ISVs to sharpen their focus on what’s most important to succeed in the current environment. For 2026, we advise ISVs to concentrate on three key goals. These represent the biggest opportunities to strengthen competitive position, deepen merchant ...

Reaping the Benefits of AI Without Getting Lost in the Hype By Matt Brooker

By IPMI Blog posted 04-29-2026
By Matt Brooker: I like to think I’m tech savvy. I love geeking out on systems thinking, automation, and leveraging technology to work smarter. In many ways, I’m very excited about what AI can do. At the same time, the proliferation of AI slop, occasionally frustrating shortcomings of the tools, and the sheer ubiquity of the topic in our personal and professional lives sometimes leaves me thinking “enough with the AI already…”. If this resonates with you, here are a few ways to reap the maximum benefits from AI without getting lost in the hype or succumbing to AI-fatigue: Create a culture of experimentation collaboration. Seeing examples of how colleagues ...

The Spaces Between Us By Jade Neville

By IPMI Blog posted 04-28-2026
Why women’s safety in parking starts with who’s in the room By Jade Neville: I’ve stood in poorly lit parking garages on both sides of the Atlantic, and the feeling is exactly the same. That instinctive shift in awareness — keys ready, pace quickened, a quick text to let someone know you’ve arrived safely. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in a UK multi-storey or a parking garage Stateside. The experience is universal. As Chair of the Women’s Safety Group for Women in Transport, I see this every day. And the data backs it up — nearly half of women report feeling unsafe walking alone in a parking garage at night. Yet these spaces are so rarely shaped by ...

Workplace Accidents and Human Factors Go Hand in Hand, even in the Parking Industry By Scott Rohde, PECP, PTMP

By IPMI Blog posted 04-27-2026
By Scott Rohde, PECP, PTMP: Workplace accidents are very common, even in the parking industry. But should it be? Workplace injuries are in the tens of thousands each year. Economically, over 50 billion dollars is lost each year in accidents. Human factors are the cause in a vast majority of cases. But often there is a connection between human factors and other causes. Understanding how people work and creating safeguards (rules, safety plans and supervision) can go a long way to prevent deaths and injuries if applied correctly. Many types of errors exist, managers don’t think about them often. Two specifically involve information processing errors ...

Hilton or Marriott By Jeff Pinyot

By IPMI Blog posted 04-22-2026
By Jeff Pinyot: Paper or plastic, Ginger or MaryAnne, Left or Right, so many decisions. That reminds me, do you remember the episode of Gilligan’s Island where they were just about to get rescued off the island when Gilligan did something stupid to ruin it? One of the most impactful decisions you will ever make is where to cast your hotel loyalty (tongue in cheek). As a frequent flyer, I’m Southwest all day long as that Companion Pass is the best perk in the travel industry. Many years ago, I chose Hilton, despite Paris. Many a high school spring break was brought to the Pinyot family courtesy of Hilton Honors points, and my Lifetime Diamond achievement. ...