Board Perspective

It’s all about parking. Every conversation with the public and private sector includes parking. Now, more than ever, it’s not just about how we operate garages but how we repurpose garages and evolve on-street parking to include curb management and monetization, shared mobility options, seamless mobility, apps, connected cars, and on-demand transportation options. We are living in a 24/7 world, juggling a macrocosm of outside forces coming at us fast and furious:

• Shared Roads. We are designing our cities and towns to create safe and accessible shared roads through curb management initiatives for all types of vehicles, transit, bikes, and pedestrians.
• Environmental Collaboration. The parking industry is part of the environmental path, including electric vehicle charger installations, green infrastructure initiatives to ensure water quality programming in our parking facilities, redesigning on-street parking and managing the curb, and decreasing carbon emissions related to delivery truck idling.
• Electric Vehicles. We are already seeing a fast pace and collaborative verticals mainstreaming electric vehicles as they take center stage in mixed-use development, zoning regulations, shared on-demand technology, funding, and manufacturing. With new emissions standards scheduled to take place by 2032, it is expected that 67% of new car sales will be electric.
• Autonomous/Self-Driving Vehicles. These have been in the planning, design, and testing phase. We still need to create safe, accessible, and affordable options, including construction and infrastructure changes and human behavior acceptance. The buzz is that this will be more accepted before 2030, but I’m still on the fence.
• Flying Cars. As we run out of planet Earth’s real estate, are flying cars that far off? Not really. It may seem like something out of a Jetson cartoon or Marvel movie, but it’s already in the planning, design, and testing phase. The construction and infrastructure phase will take some time, requiring our garages and other mixed-use developments to be repurposed and reconstructed to accommodate flying cars in a safe and accessible space.
• Shared Mobility. We are transitioning from vehicle ownership to on-demand subscription/membership shared mobility platforms, including on-demand transit, TNCs, electric vehicle chargers, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and, yes, flying cars.

A lot is happening all at once! But let’s not forget that every community, every development, every town, and every city is at a different point in this ever-changing evolution. Demographics, population, geography, and behaviors are evolving at different paces. What works in one place will be different in another. With these differences come opportunities.

As leaders, we must recognize that our world is changing fast. We are responsible for educating our customers and constituents, partnering with each other, and being nimble.

Our industry is at the epicenter of changing our world and our future. We’ve come a long way, baby. Giddyap! ◆