Every campus parking office is asked to improve the experience and hold the headcount.
Those sound like competing instructions. They are the same instruction, because most of what a parker experiences as friction arrives at your office as work.
A queue is staff time. A lost permit is staff time. A driver who cannot work out how to pay is a phone call, and often an appeal three weeks later.
What Does Friction Actually Cost a Parking Office?
It converts into three lines you already pay for: staffing, uncollected revenue and appeals.
The University of Alberta ran an event that had always required extra equipment to handle demand. Randa Kachkar, Associate Director of Parking Services, described what changed after introducing tap to pay:
“Each year we bring in extra pay stations to meet demand for this event but HonkTAP reduced those lines significantly from previous years and the extra pay stations are no longer necessary! Folks were able to pay and be on their way within seconds.”
Read that as an operations result rather than a testimonial. Extra pay stations no longer necessary is a line item that disappeared. The lines shortening is the visible part; the equipment not being rented is the part that reaches a budget.
Why Does the App Download Matter So Much?
Because a one time visitor will not do it.
A student parking every day will install anything once. A visitor, a contractor, a parent on move in day or somebody attending a Saturday event will not, and that is exactly the population most likely to give up and park without paying.
HONK’s tap to pay approach removes the step entirely. A driver taps a phone against signage, lands on a guest checkout page, enters a plate and pays. No download and no account. Older phones without NFC scan a QR code and get the same thing.
Every step you remove from that sequence shows up in what you collect, because the alternative to a frictionless payment is not a slower payment. It is no payment.
What Does It Change for the People Who Park Every Day?
It removes the objects. El Camino College describes the change for students and staff as the end of waiting in line, managing paper passes and dealing with lost permits, with payment through the mobile wallets they already use.
A lost permit is a small event for the student and a predictable one for you. Multiply it across a population and it is a recurring counter interaction that produces nothing except a replacement.
The rest of the counter’s traffic goes the same way. Payments, extensions and renewals are self serve: someone who needs another hour extends from a phone instead of returning to the lot, and a renewal happens without a visit to the office. On your side it all lands in one dashboard, so the question that used to mean checking three systems is answered in one lookup.
Does a Better Experience Actually Reach the Numbers You Report On?
Yes, along three chains, and none of them is customer satisfaction.
Payment friction to collection. A driver who gives up does not pay. Unpaid parking is your number, not theirs.
Queues to staffing. A line at a counter in September is hours somebody worked. Removing the reason for the line is the only way to remove the hours without removing the person.
Confusion to appeals. A citation issued to somebody who genuinely could not work out how to pay is the appeal most likely to be granted, and the most expensive to process. The cheapest appeal is the one nobody files.
What Is the Smallest Useful Change?
Make paying possible without a download for anyone who is not a permit holder. Visitors and event attendees are the population where friction and lost revenue overlap most, and they are usually served worst.
It is also the change you can make without touching your permit programme, your rates or your enforcement rules, which is why it tends to be the one that clears a committee first. Pick the lot with the most visitor traffic, run it there for a term, and compare collection against the same lot last year. One lot and one term is enough evidence to argue from.
For the permit population, the equivalent move is issuing and renewing online. Same principle, different audience: the steps you remove are steps your office no longer staffs.
And if you want the revenue frame before the experience one, start with what a campus parking space earns in a year.
What to do next. Ask HONK for a walkthrough of guest checkout on one visitor lot. Bring last September’s collection number for that lot, and leave with the comparison you would run this term.
Common Questions
Does removing the app mean losing the data? No. Plate, session, location and payment are all captured at guest checkout. The account is optional for the driver, not for the record.
Will this work for event parking? That is where it tends to show the largest difference, because event traffic is almost entirely people who have never parked with you before.
What about drivers without a smartphone? Existing payment methods stay. The point is to add the path most people will actually use, not to remove the others.
Is this a student initiative or an operations one? Both, and it is worth presenting it as operations. The experience is what a committee approves. The staffing and collection effects are what a finance office approves.
