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September 2004 • Parking Today • www.parkingtoday.com43comments from a managerfter a lengthy tele-phone conversationwith yet another cus-tomer who felt as if he hadspent an excessive amount oftime exiting our garage --after having spent a relaxingnight at the theater -- wesaid, “OK, enough isenough!” It was obvious, bythe increase in unpleasanttelephone calls, that our orig-inal well-thought-out proce-dures had sprung a leak. Itwas obvious we had toimprove our exiting process. OK, for the sake of brevi-ty, a little history on the sub-ject: The newly renovatedHippodrome Theatre waspresented as the best thing tohit Baltimore since the open-ing of the Ravens footballstadium ... oops, I mean theM&T Stadium. To say theleast, a lot was on the line. At the topof the list: my job, as well as my boss’job. Simply put, this entire parkingoperation had to be top-notch -- amechanism that had no glitches (or,at least, no glitches that the laypersoncould see).First and foremost was a meetingof the minds. Hence, a gathering ofme and the three managers to devisea plan. Three major focuses came tofruition:In addition to the already sched-uled events the managers were cur-rently working, we agreed that eachof us would work a night performancefor the next three consecutive weeks. We would individually come upwith some idea that would make exit-ing the facility more effective and effi-cient.It would be the responsibility ofthe manager working the followingnight to implement the new idea andreport on its effectiveness and effi-ciency.This is what management is allabout.The first idea implemented was tohave the event staff explain to thecustomer upon entry to have theirparking ticket ready to speed up theirexit. Also implemented was an ideathat the staff came up with -- havingthe traffic control staff use a whistleto control the bottleneck at the garagecrossover. (This particular garage is adouble helix, which means it is reallytwo garages in one.) The next ideawas to hand out a sheet of paper reit-erating to the customer to have theirticket ready when exiting. This paperalso included information as to whichgarage elevator to use to access thetheater. The above-implemented ideasincreased exiting traffic flow by 20percent per 10 minutes.As we approached the third andfinal week of our newly agreed uponplan, we scheduled a meeting to see ifwe were missing anything. A decisionto work the final week in pairs wasagreed upon. This had thepotential of proving the oldsaying that “too many cooksin the kitchen spoils thefood.” Pleasantly surprised,we found this wasn’t the caseat all. Quite the contrary.Doubling up of managementstaff resulted in just theopposite effect, and moreimportant, it resulted in asynergy (1+1=3)! Apparently,our efforts in the previousweeks proved fruitful, as thissynergy resulted in findingthe missing link in our goalof increasing the exiting flowof traffic (which includedstrategically placing twoinformational signs in appro-priate sites).This is graduate schoolmanagement at its best, and Iam sure this process happensin garages all the time. We inthe parking industry need to recog-nize that we are no different from anyother service industry -- except for thefact that we refuse to accept that weare no different. Let me explain: The parkingindustry is not that dirty little busi-ness quoted by the Motley Fool as “anugly business.” This perception needsto change. The parking industry is agrowing industry with professionalsfrom all walks of life, such as engi-neers, architects, developers, humanresources, electricians, managers, etc.More appropriately, the parkingindustry is a worldwide conglomer-ate. However, this perception willchange only when we -- yes, we(everyone in the industry) -- worktogether to change it.Robert Milner is the Director of Parkingand Transportation for the University ofMaryland, Baltimore. He can be reachedat rmilner@parking.umaryland.edu.Ayes we can...Yes We Can...YES WE CAN!!!!!!By Robert MilnerPT