PT's Parking Blog

Soylent,,,,er,,,,Green?

Sainsbury's Supermarket in Glouchester in the UK has installed a peizo electric system in its parking garage so cars driving over the equpment actually generate enough electricity to run the store's checkout counters. If you are interested in the technology, read about it here. They have drawings and everything.

I think this is great. The store is also using cold air from the freezers to cool the store and is designed so huge windows light the place during the day and they can cut back on light. Plus they are capturing rainwater and heating it with solar panels for warming the building.

One wag commented that with all the eco friendly equipment in the store, they might try offering "Soylent" in the deli section. We understand that the "Green" variety is most popular.

(For those of you under 45 the movie Soylent Green starred Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Conners, Joseph Cotton, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly and Edward G. Robinson. Oh, yes, Dick Van Patten is in it as an usher. Go rent it and watch while eating some pistachio ice cream or lime jello. Ymmmmm. Then you will understand the reference.)

As Current as Today’s Headlines

This story follows on the heels of the post below. It's not about a security problem with a system, it's about how a system is designed to work.

In this case it's a case of "batch" versus a true "on line" system. With a batch system, credit card numbers are checked by the bank once a day, say in the evening after the meters are off duty. The parker has already been given his receipt, used the parking, and is on his way. If a card is rejected, the money is lost. In a true on line system, the cards are checked every time they are inserted. Of course that means that the meters must be either on line all the time or contact the central system whenever a card is inserted (and this might take a few moments to complete the transaction.)

So how much could be lost if a few cards are rejected? According to an auditor in Toronto, the city lost about 5% of its $53,000,000 in revenue because of bad cards. There was no failing of the system, it worked as advertised. The problem is that because they didn't reject the cards when they were inserted, $2.7 million in revenue was lost.

On line systems aren't inexpensive. The infrastructure might not exist in some places. A smart buyer has to weight the risk versus the cost. At 5% a year in lost revenue, how long would it take to recover the additional cost of the online equipment?

JVH

Oh Oh, Enter “Dark Reading:” Parking Meters: The Next Big Hack?

I've never heard of it, but it's real. There is a web site and a trade show devoted solely to hacking into computer systems and finding ways to prevent it. The site is called "Dark Reading." The trade show is the "Black Hat USA" conference.

These groups are looking into the security of and hacking into on street parking equipment. You can read all about it here.

I love the headline: Parking Meters: The Next Big Hack?

I quote from the article and Security Researcher Joe Grand:

"Why parking meters? It's a combination of everything, software, hardware, network connectivity and it's a physical real application used all over the world. They're taken for granted. It's just a big metal box in the ground where you shove your money into it, get your parking and you walk away." Grand added that most parking meter users don't think about the financial risks and the social implications of the parking meters if there was to be security breach against them.

In 2003, San Francisco replaced 23,000 mechanical meters with new smart parking meters at a cost of $35 million. Grand noted that other major cities in the US and around the world have also adopted a new generation of smart parking meters. These meters provide smart card capabilities, can take credit cards in some cases, have display screens and are usually networked.

From a security point of view, there are multiple angles to examine on a parking meter. With smart card meters where there are cards that are loaded with dollar values, those cards could potentially be reset or reloaded. Some meters also take credit cards and that information might be stored on the meter where an attacker could potentially grab the information.

In some cities, the meters are connected by wireless networks while in other cases they can be accessed by way of an infrared wireless device. Grand noted that meters could potentially be reset to give free parking – or on the other side to expire parking for a valid spot. Smart meters also often have LCD screens which Grand commented could hypothetically be used by a hacker to transmit messages.

So you wonder. Do our manufacturers have all this in mind when they write the software that runs the parking systems?

Think about it – Someone who hacked into a parking system could change the rates, make parking free at all times, copy the numbers off credit cards, put their own messages on the displays, add money to debit cards, or cause all types of mischief. These security hackers try to break into systems and then, I assume, sell their knowledge to the manufacturers to show them how to prevent it from happening.

I used to work in that part of the industry. My old boss always told me that security in computers was illusionary. "The minute you think you have something that is completely secure," he would say, "Is the moment you think you are smarter than everyone else. And of course that's never true."

JVH

 

A Lot of Spam

Spam, the bane of email. Automatically sent, clogging in boxes and spam filters interglactically. It's horrible; it's devastating: it's worse than bad personal hygiene. OK, we hate it. But, why do we hate it so much that we are willing to miss important messages, some personal, just to rid ourselves of the blight?

I don't get it. When we receive advertising in the mail we don't drop to the post office floor and start beating our fists on the tile. We simply take the items we don't want and dump them in the trash. Why can't we do that with spam?

I guess I understand that if you are a private individual and want to "protect' yourself from spammers, you can set up something akin to the great wall of China that one has to navigate to get your message delivered. Fine, that's your business.

However, if you are a company wanting to sell your product or service to others, why would you want to make that more difficult? It makes no sense whatsoever.

I got a message this AM from someone who wanted me to send them some information. I did so. Two seconds later I got a message from them subtly accusing me of being a spammer and "if I wasn't" I should follow the instructions. Now in this case they weren't too difficult, but frankly I was put out having to do it at all.

Sometimes you have to decipher weird letters that often are not possible to understand and fill in blanks with these characters. They often you have to wait days for the message to find its way through, in this case Earthlink's maze, to the person you are trying to reach.

I have a system here at PT that works pretty well. My server (Verizon FIOS) filters out about 250 spam messages a day. I can, if I want, go on line and look at the messages it has removed. To this date I have not found one that was improperly removed.

My second line of defense is Outlook. It checks each message and if it thinks it is spam, it puts it in my "junk mail" file. I get about 30 of these a day, and of those, about 5 are messages I want. I can then tell Outlook not to catch messages from that person again. It takes about 15 seconds to scan the "junk mail" file each day and then permanently remove them.

My correspondents don't get the third degree, I get my messages and all is right with the world.

(I will note that Verizon gets a bit aggressive and sometimes returns messages that are obviously valid. I can then contact Verizon (by email) and tell them to ratchet it back a bit.)

For those private individuals who require me to "do something human" to get my message through to them, I say "so be it." Most likely you won't receive anything from me, even if you have requested it from me. For those of you in business who have made it difficult for me to contact you, I suggest you rethink your email program. Whenever you make it more difficult for someone to contact you, you are losing business. Think about it.

JVH

Does Philly cash the Check?

Lynn commented on my Parking Wars post below and it's important enough that I thought it should be posted "in the open."

But, showing people paying their tickets in an orderly fashion would not be good reality TV! Of course, the producers of Parking Wars will show all the 'ugliness' of parking enforcement. As someone wise once told me - 'parking is a grudge cost'. It's difficult to make this industry into a bed of roses when customers pay us because they HAVE to!

So, what isn't mentioned in your post is how much the City of Philadelphia is being paid to be on Parking Wars? If the Mayor does not watch, I bet he still cashes the checks from the Parking Wars production company. Food for thought. :-)

Anyone know how much "Parking Wars" pays Philly?

JVH

Parking Meters – Stationary tax collectors

The Moultrie (GA) Observer is commenting on bringing back parking meters in the downtown area:

Bottom line, Parking meters are only stationary tax collectors. We would be taking a giant leap backwards with their return. Read more public opinion in Saturday's Moultrie Observer.

Ah HA – Someone (beside moi) actually said it. On street parking charges are a tax. Yes, correctomundo. The charging for onstreet parking is a use tax, just as taxes charged for gasoline is a use tax for roads, and property tax is there to pay for police and fire and the rest.

So I ask the Observer writer: Why shouldn't drivers be charged a tax to park on the streets to cover the costs of providing the parking on the streets?

I'll check out Saturday's edition and perhaps we will find the answer.

JVH

Whoops….He Took $5 million a year

I received this from four different correspondents. I print it without comment.

Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England , there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 coaches, or buses.   It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40) and coaches £5 (about $7). This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years.

Then, one day, he just didn't turn up for work.

"Oh well", said Bristol Zoo Management - "we'd better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant..."

"Err ... no", said the Council, "that parking lot is your responsibility."

"Err ... no", said Bristol Zoo Management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?"

"Err ... NO!" insisted the Council.

Sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of  Spain , is a bloke who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($5 million)!  / [FYI - that works out to $200,000/year -- all bottom line income, with no taxes or costs-of-goods-sold (except for his chair, umbrella and ticket machine)

And no one even knows his name.

JVH

 

 

Parking Wars – Not showing Philly’s best side

According to the New York Times the folks who are responsible for Philadelphia's image don't like A and E's "Parking Wars." Read all about it here.

I've seen the show only once and commented at the time that it is a most boring program. It shows the same thing, over and over and over. People get a ticket. People complain about the ticket, People eventually pay their ticket. The people are usually folks who are scofflaws, who have many (sometimes hundreds) of unpaid tickets, and feel that they are put upon. Of course, these folks usually live in the how should we say"less than nice" parts of town, and may have some reason to feel that the "man" is focusing on them.

Of course, all this yelling, and citing and drama is done on a background of the dirtier and poorer parts of the city, and don't really put the parking officers in the best of light, although in my opinion at least for the show I watched, they all seem to be doing a good job.

So Philly is upset since people are writing letters that they aren't going to visit the City of Brotherly Love due to the image that's reflected in the show.

I can sort of understand that. A friend of mine who lives in Shanghai refused to bring his family to LA because he thought the city streets were like those he saw in movies and on TV. It took me three years to convince him that his family would be safe in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica. But I digress.

Someone must be watching the show; it's been reupped for a new season. But my guess is that its renewal is as much due to the fact that it is inexpensive to produce as its popularity.

The local press has asked the Mayor and Governor to step in and have the show cancelled. Of course they can't do that, something about that pesky First Amendment (the Inquirer didn't know about freedom of speech, oh well). However the Governor's office did have a comment. "Do what the Governor does, don't watch it."

Seems about right.

JVH

Midwesterners are slow – NOT!!!

I wrote this in a blog entry below:

Good points, Trish. However I personally know of a number of cases (OK, they are in New York and LA, not in the heartland, and I consider Florida part of the heartland, except Miami and Orlando, where people do think a bit for themselves) where ticket after ticket was written and the car was just left there.

Some take it that I was saying that Midwesterners are slow. Nope, that the opposite of what I meant. If I were an editor I would have had it rewritten like this:

Good Points, Trish. However I personally know of a number of cases (they were in New York and LA, not in the heartland where people do think a bit for themselves), where ticket after ticket was written and the car was just left there.

Avid readers of this blog know that I have great respect for "flyover country" and believe in the 50 mile rule. That is, people who live within 50 miles of an ocean (like me) have a skewed view of morality and life in general. – Lay off New Yorkers and Angelenos. You know exactly what I mean.

JVH

Parken

"Parken" is the German equivalent of the IPI show. This year it was held in Wiesbaden and was attended by hundreds of German parking professionals. I was fortunate enough to be in attendance last week and met a number of old friends and made some new ones.

The Germans focus on the exhibition, with over 100 exhibitors with a great European looking exhibit hall, each exhibitor having a "shell scheme" build by the organizers. The usual suspects were in attendance (Scheidt and Bachmann, Skidata, Parkeon, Designa, Zeag) as well as many smaller specialized German parking suppliers.

I spend a wonderful hour with Klaus Gindl who was hanging out with his daughter at the Skidata booth. Klaus who at one time was the German distributor for Scheidt and Bachmann and then went to work with the company running their overseas operations, is partnered with his son on a number of ventures, some dealing with parking and representing Skidata in various countries.

Klaus told me that his success was never to burn a bridge and to have good relationships with his competitors. He proved it by taking me to the Designa booth and introducing Dr Thomas Waibel, the MD of the company. Thomas is a charming gentleman and very aware of the industry and his company's place in it.

Americans should be impressed by how seamlessly Europeans move from the native language and back again. I was talking to Thomas and Klaus in English, then they converted to German when I move to talk to Designa's marketing manager, but then returned to English when my focus was back on them. Most polite and impressive.

Next year, if you want a bit of something different, take in Parken in Germany.

JVH