Many companies don’t think very much about parking permits. Not one bit. Why should they? Parking permits are something you give out to a new employee as they go through their employee orientation. Some companies update parking passes. But we’d like to suggest you consider thinking much more of the parking pass than it being something for your employee to add to their car.

Parking permits keep employees safe. Many companies have systems where they know which employees have entered their facility. This is an ideal system, whether you simply check people off manually or you have a digital scanner or even a video camera. It is critical you know where your employees are, especially if they come in to work early or work late. Every employer wants their employees to be safe – no one likes to think of an employee having an accident on the job and it not being discovered until much later because no one realized that employee was on the grounds. Knowing who is on your grounds through parking permits can help prevent that from occurring.

Parking permits also help to keep employers safe too. Employers need to be careful about knowing exactly who is on their company property and who isn’t. Security staff needs to be sure to match an employee’s car and face with their parking permit every time. A parking permit can be stolen, and someone that doesn’t belong there could therefore gain access to your company’s grounds. Or a terminated employee could come on grounds with an old parking permit. It is critical that your security staff stays up-to-date on which parking permits have expired. Anyone with an expired or canceled permit should not be allowed on grounds, no matter what their job title. Not everyone in the company may be aware of a termination – and this may prevent a serious situation before it gets worse.

The best parking permits are ones that must be updated regularly. While your security staff may grumble a bit at this idea, it actually does a bit of good work for them. Just as we mentioned the example of the terminated employee gaining access – there are other examples of people you simply don’t want gaining access to your company’s grounds with a parking permit. Having a system that updates parking permits every quarter or a certain time period is an excellent precaution for your security personnel. While it may offer them paperwork and some more time in the office, it can save them from managing a more serious situation.

A parking permit is ideal when it has all of the important information about an employee. The parking permit should have their license plate number, car model, job title and full name. Ideally it has their work telephone number as well. It should also have a recent photo of the person. Security should check the photo and the license plate number on the parking permit every time someone comes in. This is an ideal precaution for your company – and puts the parking permits to good use.

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I’ve started a new job and they made me get a parking permit. A parking permit? How official! I guess every company has its own procedures. My Human Resources Manager asked me to keep note of my feelings about having a parking permit over the next two weeks and to report back. So I’ll share them with you.

Day 1, Week 1: Entering the Building They Know Who You Are

What a great feeling to work in a large company but to have the security office know who I am as I enter the company grounds. I was nervous for my first day, wondering how things would be. But the security manager smiled and said, “Welcome Mr. Clark.” I just felt better and more at home right at once. I know I’m going to like it here.

Day 3, Week 1: Left My Lights On

Today we’ve had a thunderstorm and I left the lights on my car. This could have been a real hassle at the end of the day, with me calling for a jump from an auto shop at the end of the day and waiting at least an hour for them to show up. But instead, I got a call from the security desk about twenty minutes into my day that my lights were on. I went down to my car and turned them off. Security suggested I check the battery at lunch to be sure it works. They said they can call the auto shop for me then if it doesn’t so I wont miss any time from work calling an auto shop at the end of the day. How convenient!

Day 4, Week 1: Came to Work Early Today

I lost a little time yesterday dealing with my lights so I came to work early today to catch up on everything. Security was there in their station, greeting me by name. I was one of the first cars on the grounds. In some ways I was glad they were there so I wasn’t there by myself. It’s a new place to me and being somewhere unfamiliar is a bit intimidating. The security guard also told me that security keeps early employees or late employees safe, especially if they are working alone. That they know who is working often by checking your parking permit. And they’ll check on someone if they see my car there but I haven’t come out in awhile. This is a great place.

Day 1, Week 2: Human Resources Confirmed My Emergency Contacts

Today I got a call from Human Resources. I didn’t fill out completely my emergency contacts for my parking permit. You need to put down at least one emergency contact for your parking permit and I didn’t give them a telephone number. So I went down to their department and filled that out. At first I thought these parking permits were a little silly and kind of a hassle but now I realize my company is looking out for me. If anything happens to me, they’ll always have my emergency contact information handy and be able to help me. This is much better than working for a company that doesn’t have parking permits.

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New employees often are curious about their benefits. A great benefit you can offer to your employees is a parking sticker program. Parking stickers help keep your employees safe and let you know who is on your company’s grounds at all times. New employees greatly benefit from parking decals. Still not sure? Let’s talk about some of the ways your new employees would appreciate having a parking sticker program:

It is best to give parking passes to new employees right away. During orientation is an easy time to give them. Show them where they are to park and if there are any reserved parking spots or areas they should not park. Let them know how to display their parking pass. Employees should also know when they will receive an updated parking pass.

No one likes to think about a flat tire or other car trouble, but it happens. You can easily leave your lights on after traveling through the rain on the way to work. This can run your battery down, leaving you to come out to a car that won’t start. But if security notices a car with the lights on or a flat tire, they can look at the parking sticker and go find the employee in their department. They can call an auto repair shop and help get the car fixed while the person is working. This means your employee doesn’t miss work to fix their car and can leave at the end of the day as planned.

Most companies that offer parking passes change them occasionally – every three to six months. This means as your staffing changes, only current employees will have updated parking passes. This is also very useful to your company and employees. Updating your parking passes occasionally can remind all departments to only give parking passes to current employees – and if there are new employees in that department that they need to get a parking pass.

Parking stickers let security know exactly who is on company grounds at all times. This helps keep the employees safe, especially if employees work late or come in early to work – where they would be working by themselves. Security will get to know the employees that regularly stay late or come in early and can check on them occasionally. If a car is still there at a very late hour, security can go check the employee’s department to be sure they are okay.

Offering parking passes to your employees helps them feel safe but it also offers them a convenient and easy place to park. At many companies, employees have to search for a parking place in the morning. Giving your employees a parking pass means you have done this for them. It is a convenience and a perk to offer your employees parking passes. This means they don’t have to pay for parking during the day. This saves them the time and hassle of finding a parking place. It is a great benefit to offer your employees parking passes for a job well done!

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The daily school run is a major cause of traffic congestion in the peak morning rush hour, despite the widespread use of school buses. The problem is compounded with the safety issue of congested traffic trying to get children to school safely whilst other road users are also trying to get into work.  The problem is further compounded with school teachers trying to get into work to manage the daily inflow of substantial numbers of students, and in high schools where students are driving their own cars, the situation is even worse.

Parking permits are a major tool to combat traffic congestion around schools.  The typical scenario is for children to be taken to school and dropped off by parents who try to park their vehicles anywhere they can, as long as it is close to school. Even with small numbers of parents trying to park close by school, the traffic congestion this causes in hindering the normal traffic flow is extensive. Unfortunately, the numbers involved are not small and they are also growing.

The problem of traffic congestion around schools is particularly sensitive because with traffic congestion comes a heightened risk of traffic accidents. Driver attention is stretched with so many external factors to watch out for and take into account for safe driving. Combining this with the fact that children are inherently unpredictable, and especially because they have a reduced sense of danger from road users, this is a recipe for disaster. Many car accidents involving children occur within 100 yards of a school, and frequently accidents occur on the school premises as parents drive onto school property.

By reducing traffic congestion around and on school premises, the risk to children is dramatically reduced. At the same time, traffic is able to flow faster and more safely for all road users involved.

Parking permits are an effective method of controlling parking around schools. By ensuring that only parents and vehicles with parking permits can park upon school grounds and the surrounding roads within a certain controlled zone, the amount of traffic congestion will be significantly reduced. A parking permit is an easily managed solution which ensures that only vehicles with permission are allowed to park close by schools. By ensuring that parking permits must be displayed it becomes a simple solution to police and enforce.

A further advantage of enforcing parking permit schemes close by school is that polluting emissions are reduced.  Children are highly susceptible to pollution from cars and other road users, and especially kids suffering from respiratory complaints such as asthma or allergies suffer disproportionately.

Overall, introducing school parking permits reduces congestion and speeds up the time it takes to have children safely onto the school premises.  The school commute time is reduced overall too, and school safety is significantly improved for those educational establishments controlling traffic on and around their premises.

Instituting a school parking permit scheme is simple.  Parking permits can easily be sourced and it is a simple task to issue and enforce the scheme once it is introduced. Obtaining the necessary permissions from local government is also fairly easy to achieve as such schemes have no downside – children are protected, road congestion is eased and the environment is protected which makes it practically impossible to argue against.

Reducing Traffic Congestion with Carpooling Parking Permits

99% of car journeys in the United States end with free parking, however with traffic congestion rising and strangling economic development, as well as incurring huge costs, this is unsustainable. Urban areas and inner cities have long known that barring traffic from certain zones is one way to control traffic congestion, however without an adequate public transportation system, essential traffic carrying residents and commuter workers.

A solution to the issue is to implement a car pooling parking permit scheme.

Car pooling is a win-win situation whereby even with a two people sharing a car, the traffic congestion factor is reduced by half. If three people share a ride, that is two additional vehicles removed from the equation and so on.

It is not just congestion which is eased as there is a range of other factors at work.  Not least is the environmental issue with the reduction in pollution from car emissions and the reduced noise from fewer cars on the road.  Localized pollution and environmental concerns are therefore very quickly addressed; however the benefits do not end there. There are environmental benefits on the macro scale too. Car travel is highly inefficient from a fuel consumption perspective, which is why public transportation networks are so highly favored and desired. In terms of fuel consumption per commute, even full cars are highly inefficient, but by carpooling at least maximum car efficiency can be achieved which in turn reduces overall fuel consumption.

Parking is widely regarded as a ‘right’ rather than what it really is – a convenient privilege which comes with a significant cost attached.

By implementing a car pooling scheme which has advantages and benefits conferred upon users, it will be a more attractive option for commuters who will more readily adopt the practice. We see the impact that High Occupancy Lanes already has for many commuters who are regularly snarled and delayed in heavy traffic conditions, whilst car poolers are able to use free highway lanes reserved for their use. It makes sense to extend the benefits of car pooling to commuters by making it simpler and easier for them to find parking too.

By designating parking spaces strictly for car poolers, traffic management is able to make the work commute and regular traffic flows easier for everyone involved. At its fundamental heart, by controlling parking privileges the traffic flow can be controlled and every road users’ behaviors can be influenced. After all, if you are unable to park a vehicle conveniently, then car travel becomes less attractive unless there is some other attached benefit to using them. From the perspective of residents and businesses within high congestion zones, it makes a great deal of sense to impose and maintain strict control over the traffic flows and who can park in areas with limited space. Businesses benefit by increased and more convenient access for essential workers and customers, whilst residents benefit from living in a less traffic congested area.

Implementing car pooling parking schemes are not difficult as they follow the pattern of traditional parking permit schemes.  These have been around for long enough now that the process for implementation and enforcement is well understood. The benefits are significant and hard to argue against, so obtaining the consent of local government agencies involved and adoption by road users is almost guaranteed.

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So you’re starting your own company? Congratulations! If you’re starting your own company then you’ve got a lot to handle. Well we’re going to add one more thing to your plate: parking labels. Parking labels for your employees are very important. For safety and morale – parking labels are quite useful. Let’s talk about how you can use parking labels to motivate and keep employees happy.

What does it mean when you have a parking label? It means you have a specific place to park your car. Whether this means a certain parking spot or a parking lot where you can choose your own spot, this is a great perk to offer your employees. And it is one that many potential employees look for. Let’s face it: finding a parking spot in the mornings can be a real hassle. The simple fact that you offer parking labels and a place to park can be seen as a great benefit to any potential employee. So while it may take a little paperwork and cost on your part, offering parking permits pays off in the long run in many ways.

Parking labels help many employees feel safe in the workplace. At many offices when you have a parking label, there is a security office that checks your parking label as you come in and as you leave. This means someone always knows who is in the building or office. If you work earlier or later than others, this can make you feel quite safe. It’s a good feeling to know there is security staff aware of who else is in the building. If you are a hardworking person, this is a great convenience.

A parking label can also mean that security keeps an eye on cars during the day. If they notice someone has a flat tire during the day, they can check the information on their security tag and find out what department they work in and contact them. Then security can help them get the tire fixed by calling a local garage, all while the person doesn’t miss work. Just imagine how much easier this is than coming out at the end of the day to a flat tire. Or how much harder security would have to work to help someone if the cars did not have parking labels – and they weren’t sure whose car it was.

In setting up parking labels with your company you want to create a system. Probably the best thing to do is to give them out right when people are hired. This way you can ask for their information as they are in orientation – instead of waiting awhile. Many parking labels have a photo of the person, their license plate #, make of car and other contact information. Most companies renew parking labels every few months – this also makes sure you have updated department and contact information.

Parking labels are a great way to boost morale and to keep your employees happy. Most employees prefer to have parking labels when asked their choice. It’s an easy program to implement. Start parking labels at your company today!

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Controlling parking space is essential to ensure a consistent throughput of traffic to your business location.  Contrary to popular belief, providing free parking does not increase customer walk-in traffic and in fact, more usually decreases walk-ins because of non-availability of parking space – your largest area is typically utilized by people by have no intention of visiting your store.

Even when you are not operating a business which caters to the retail sector, controlling parking is essential to ensure employees are productive and maintain their morale, while equally, you want visitors to be able to park quickly and securely when they are doing business at your location.  Controlling site access and parking is also essential for effective delivery and dispatch of raw materials and finished goods

Parking permits and tags are usually considered to be the domain of the local agencies who are responsible for policing parking areas in towns and municipalities, however they have direct application for private landowners and businesses too.  Parking permits act as an authorization to enter and park at a location, but they also control when parking and access may take place by restricting times and dates when the permit may be used.  Where a privately owned location is using permits, the rules are at the discretion of the operator of the parking system (usually the business owner).  Where parking permits are utilized in public places, then their use and application must conform to state and county laws and regulations, including enforcement action.

There are a large number of styles and formats for parking permits which can be used in a wide variety of situations.  You may need to issue permanent parking permits, in which case they need to be robust, usually capable of being fixed to a windshield for permanent display, or alternatively, you may want to issue a temporary permit to allow a visitor access for a short visit or just the day.

The most common types of parking permit are:

• Hang Tags – these typically hang from the rearview mirror and are the most commonly used parking permit available as they lend themselves to both permanent and temporary use.  When not needed, they can be easily slipped off the rearview mirror, and when in use, they are highly visible which allows for simple enforcement and control to be exercised.  Typically, they are constructed using polyethylene which is tough and durable and you can source them as blanks, ready for you to apply your own serial or record numbers on them or you can have them pre-printed – there is no adhesive or sticky mess to contend with and the fabric of the car is unaffected;
• Bumper stickers – these are typically manufactured from a tough, weather resistant plastic with strong adhesive backing and are ideal for permanent use;
• Mirror decals – mirror decals are not placed on your car mirrors, but they have a “mirror” effect due to their design.  They have an adhesive backing or front to fix them in the car window; and
• Windshield tags – typically transparent, they are fixed to the windshield or even to the body of the car; tough and weather resistant they are a cheap and cheerful solution for permanent permits.

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Offering customer parking facilities has long been viewed as essential for attracting customers to your business, and especially for retail outlets.  Offering free parking is not the end of the story however, because “free” parking comes with a cost to your business and if you are not controlling who is using this service, and especially for how long it is being utilised, then you are failing to optimize the ROI (Return On Investment) for your business.

Curbside parking outside your store is one reason why merchants look to prime retail developments, especially downtown, as the idea is that providing parking space enhances the convenience and opportunity for through-traffic in the store.  While this sounds like it must be true from an intuitive perspective, you may be surprised to learn that curbside parking meters were not installed by any city or municipal government, but by a store owner in Oklahoma way back in 1935.  He had the idea, correct in this instance, that he needed to ensure there was available parking for customers who were going to actually use the store and not just the parking.  Available parking was continuously in use, not by customers to the store but as a point of convenient parking for visiting the downtown area – the benefit to the store owner was negligible if it was of any benefit at all.

Regulating who parks by or on your premises increases store traffic by ensuring you always have available parking.  Frequently, this entails charging for parking (which goes against the grain as 99% of parking is currently free in the US), but it focuses customer activity on your store, not the merchant area generally.  You can offset the cost to the customer by refunding the parking charge against in-store purchases, which will not deter genuine shoppers using your business.  Another technique is to ration the amount of parking time that the available space may be used – there is little benefit to your business of a free space being used by a downtown commuter for the bulk of the day or a shopper intent on convenient parking who never crosses the store threshold.

Parking permit labels and hang-tags are simple to source – online parking permit suppliers can be used to readily find parking permits which are extremely cheap and implement into a controlled parking solution.  You do not need to be concerned about spending a great deal of time or money on designing parking permits, labels or tags as many suppliers who specialise in this area, already provide easy-to-use template designs.  By combining your business identity and logo onto parking hang tags, you also help to cement your brand name in the minds of the customer.

With parking space regulations, typically designed to control vehicle emissions rather than revenue enhancement, becoming more frequent amongst many city and town agencies, you can combine the parking control policy with your own environmental efforts to reduce your carbon footprint.  For over 35 years, parking policy has largely been a dormant topic, however this is now one area where improving business effectiveness and reducing environmental impact are in harmony.

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A number of hospitals have made the news recently, not for medical advances in delivering care to patients, but rather because of how they have been dealing with parking issues and problems.  Hospitals quickly generate parking problems wherever they are located because of the density of car users converging on them – the population of a working hospital can increase by over 500% during the course of the day as family and well-wishers visit patients in care.  This causes significant parking and congestion issues as well as creating serious problems for residents in the vicinity of the hospital who find they cannot park their vehicles due to the demand by visitors.

Scripps Memorial Hospital is a hospital on the Pacific coast in California and is currently undergoing a major expansion which will see significant enlargement in terms of size, personnel, patients and of course, and visitor traffic.  The parking issue (and having to divvy out more parking hang tags) is being dealt with by building a new parking garage with 883 spaces to help ease the parking problem which is primarily associated with the very busy ER department.  The construction costs for the whole project, including the garage amount to over $200 million and the objective is to cater for demand and the growth in services to take the hospital through to 2030.

Local residents sought concessions before project approval was given, in particular to deal with the local congestion and parking problems which would be compounded by the expansion.  The garage was decided to be the most appropriate route instead of reinforcing a parking permit strategy which left local residents with mixed feelings – happy at the improved hospital services and yet dismayed at the increased congestion and parking with little restrictions or protections for local residents.

Staying with California, the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital (SVMH) is also undergoing major refurbishment and expansion with a large scale construction program.  SVMH have a blended parking system whereby employees can use a shuttle service into the hospital from outlying locations to reduce congestion.  At the same time, local residential areas enjoy controlled parking through the use of permits which prevents overstaying or misuse by visitor traffic which has expanded parking facilities being made available on the site.  The expansion plans entailed a review of the established parking permit system for controlling residential parking and it was found that this was working well for local residents though additional parking facilities at the hospital would be needed to remove additional pressures by visitor traffic that the expansion would bring.

The SVMH model of blended parking solutions is one which is being increasingly adopted by other hospitals across the country and internationally.  By reducing staff traffic and offering effective shuttle transport, journey times for employees can be substantially reduced as can their stress levels.  By focusing on providing visitor parking facilities at the hospital location, this allows the pressure to be taken off the local residential areas which can be effectively protected by a parking permit system and rigorous enforcement.  Though hospitals are generally good neighbors to have, they do create a wealth of traffic problems for the area which requires careful consideration to maximize their effectiveness and minimize disruption the area.

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Hoboken is a New Jersey city which butts up against Manhattan – it occupies only one square mile, but every year, more than one million motorists use Hoboken to park their cars in – a huge headache for the city and for parking enforcement.  Using traditional parking enforcement techniques such as paper or plastic based parking permits, parking meters and exclusion zones required a huge amount of manpower to enforce and falsifying documents was rife.  Enforcement was further complicated by the limited practicality of taking abusers to court and the legality of impounding illegally parked cars or indeed, cars which had a permit but which was not properly displayed.

In short, Hoboken needed a parking enforcement solution which would definitively identify those vehicles which could be legally parked in a spot and which were undeniably, illegally parked.

The solution was to implement RFID tags into the parking permits issued by the city.  RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and relies on the tag emitting a radio signal which in turn can be read by a “reader” used by the enforcement officer.  This process takes seconds and the information is instantly conveyed to the parking officer.  There is no need to check where a permit is located as the radio signal is emitted from the permit through the vehicle.  No radio signal means there is no parking permit and the vehicle is illegally parked, allowing a ticket to be issued.

The RFID parking permit also delivers numerous other benefits and advantages over the old system too.  Hoboken residents with a vehicle can now apply for a permit online or by using the telephone service, and overall, it is much easier to get a parking permit which saves the customer time but also saves the city time and money in processing the application and receiving payment for the permit.  This serves to maximize revenues to the city but at the same time, reduces the cost of acquiring these revenues.

RFID parking permits are extremely difficult to counterfeit – this means that fake permits are no longer such a problem in terms of lost revenues to the city and increased costs associated with the enforcement of the parking regulations.  Stolen parking permits were also a significant problem, accounting for a large number of vehicle break-ins and contributing to the crime levels experienced in the area.  As the RFID tag contains vehicle information which not only identifies who can park but which vehicle can be used, the RFID tags are not transferable and have no value to a thief or an unscrupulous motorist.

The RFID tag contains the make and model of the vehicle, the color, the driver’s license information as well as the vehicle identification and license plate number.  This makes identification of a specific vehicle simple and definitive and the reader which is used to identify the signal can readily display the information to the parking enforcement officer.

The cost of implementing the system was a mere $50,000 for the RFID tags and the reading equipment, and yet the benefits of the system have already delivered in the region of $8 million in increased revenues and reduced costs.

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Humble parking permits rarely make the news but you may be surprised at how politically charged the issue of parking and the prospective regulation of where you can park your car on a weekday or weekend becomes.

Albany in upstate New York is a great example of how parking laws which may seem so simple on the face of it, can divide a city and destroy political alliances as well as several careers.

Albany has become a bustling minor city with several parking issues to contend with.  It is not simply the issue of where can you park without getting a ticket, but who can park in your neighborhood without detracting from the area where you live!

Albany had a serious issue with people commuting into the city both to work there and as a transit point for other destinations because of the established rail center, airport and jumping off point for Canada to the north and New York City to the south.  Many commuters were parking in neighborhoods which simply didn’t want them there but unless the city made the act illegal, there was nothing unlawful about parking in front of someone’s house and blocking their drive!

Several incidents served to underline the point when in 1996, one irritated homeowner commandeered a wrecking truck and proceeded to haul away several cars parked outside his home.  Tempers flared when car owners returned to find their vehicles had been “stolen”, and violence erupted when it became clear the homeowner had hauled the cars away.

In 2004, an effort to impose a parking law which the state legislature approved of but which the city council didn’t want because it was not broad enough to be effective failed to be approved.  The ensuing political machinations would have done credit to Machiavelli, the scheming Italian politician.  Two major unions in the area, several political figures and bi-partisan grass roots movements on both sides of the parking divide came head to head.

The collision was as thunderous as any rear-ender!

Today, Albany still does not have a parking permit system despite more than 20 years of political bickering.

Parking issues dominate local elections and politics because they are emotive – people don’t want strangers using their neighborhood as a car lot, while commuters consider they already have a hard enough job getting to and from work and should not be treated unfairly.  Drivers of any denomination consider the issuance of parking fines to be just another form of raising revenue for the city or local government.

The key to effective parking regulation is to provide a fair and clear set of standards.  Parking permits are an ideal way of demonstrating just who, and when a vehicle can be parked in an area.   They provide a cheap form of regulation of parking but the crux of the underlying issue must be that parking regulations are imposed which are clearly in everyone’s interests.  It is not sufficient to simply proclaim a road or area a “No Parking Zone”; people need to use their vehicles and to be able to park when they are working or commuting, but as Albany demonstrates, getting a consensus is one heck of job requiring more than the wisdom of Solomon.

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