Parking for a growing campus is a problem you solve before the students arrive, not after the lots fill. Oregon State University’s Cascades campus in Bend is planning to grow from 10 acres to 128, and from 1,300 students to 5,000. Its parking ran on paper permits and manual workarounds, and installing pay stations across every new lot would have been prohibitive. So it moved to one digital platform first. The full story is in HONK’s OSU Cascades case study, and HONK’s guide to what a campus parking space earns covers the economics.
Why Does a Growing Campus Need Its Parking Settled Early?
Because every new lot multiplies whatever system you already run. A campus that grows on paper permits and pay stations grows its paperwork and its hardware bill with it. Each new lot means another machine to buy, power, empty and repair, and another set of hang tags to print and police.
OSU Cascades saw that cost ahead of time. Limited scalability was one of the four problems it set out to solve, because the cost to install pay stations would have been prohibitive as the campus grows from 10 to 128 acres. Settling the system before the expansion means each new lot is a setting in software rather than a construction line in the budget, and opening it takes a sign on a post.
What Was Breaking Before the Switch?
The parts of parking that touch people who are not regulars. Four challenges stood out before the switch: an inconvenient purchase process, staff availability, limited payment options and manual verifications.
The sharpest was the visitor experience. Prospective students and conference guests often left with tickets because the campus did not recognize their rental car plates, which made parking the last impression of a recruiting visit. Behind the scenes, covering parking for invited guests meant paper passes, spreadsheets and back and forth with event services. Physical permits also created paper waste the campus wanted gone, given its sustainability goals. None of those problems was a parking shortage. They were problems of setup, and setup is the part software can fix without pouring concrete.
What Did OSU Cascades Put in Place?
Four HONK modules working as one back office. Each one covers a different group:
- Daily Parking Manager for daily parkers, who pay by scanning a code or texting, in place of paper permits.
- Permit Manager for monthly resident permits, with online document submission and approval for residence hall students.
- Validation Manager for promo codes that make parking free or discounted for tours, speakers and conferences.
- Control Center as a single dashboard for self serve rate and zone management and reporting.
The point is not the number of modules. It is that visitors, residents and events sit in one system the parking team runs itself. Each module covers a group the old system served badly, and none of them needs a machine in a lot.
How Do Visitors Get Covered Without Paperwork?
With a code, issued in minutes. Under the new setup, event services can issue guest parking codes in minutes, with no spreadsheets or hang tags. Visitors validate their own parking with a promo code, which reduces citations and takes the stress out of arriving.
That is the fix for the rental car problem. The campus no longer has to know a guest’s plate in advance. The guest enters the code on arrival and the session is covered. For admissions, a campus tour now ends at the tour, not at a ticket on the windshield. The code does the work a phone call and a paper pass used to do, and the office is no longer in the middle of every invitation.
How Does the Setup Grow With the Campus?
By adding lots and permit types in software. The platform is future proof for exactly this reason: new lots or permit types can be added easily as the 128 acre expansion progresses. Control Center lets the team manage rates and zones itself, so a new lot is configured, signed and live without new hardware. That is the practical meaning of scalable: the tenth new lot takes as long to open as the first, with no new machine to buy.
Casey Bergh, Transportation Program Manager at OSU Cascades, put the goal as a red carpet experience for visitors on a platform that could keep up with the campus’s growth. The growth plan and the visitor experience turned out to be the same decision.
What Should Another Growing Campus Copy?
The order of decisions, more than the feature list. Three choices from OSU Cascades travel well.
First, decide the system before the next lot opens, so growth adds settings instead of machines. Second, give visitors and event guests a code based way to be covered, because they are the group the old system fails first. Third, keep visitors, residents and events in one back office, so the team is not reconciling three tools as the campus doubles.
A campus that waits until the lots are full makes all three decisions under pressure. One that makes them early gets to grow into the system instead of out of it. HONK’s post on what changes for a permit office covers the first weeks of that switch.
HONK gave OSU Cascades one platform for all of it. Daily Parking Manager takes scan or text payments, Permit Manager runs resident permits with online approval, Validation Manager issues the promo codes, and Control Center sets rates and zones and reports on every lot. Read the full OSU Cascades case study, then request a demo that starts from your campus map and the lots you plan to add.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did OSU Cascades replace paper parking permits?
It moved daily parkers to scan or text payments, resident permits to online applications with document submission, and guests to promo codes, all on HONK.
How do campus visitors get free or discounted parking?
At OSU Cascades, the campus issues promo codes for tours, speakers and conferences, and visitors enter the code to validate their own parking.
Why not install pay stations as a campus grows?
OSU Cascades judged the cost of installing pay stations prohibitive across a campus growing from 10 to 128 acres, and chose software that adds lots without hardware.
Sources
- HONK, How OSU Cascades Eliminated Physical Parking Permits and Went Fully Digital with HONK, case study, read 2026-10-12
- HONK, LinkedIn post with Casey Bergh on OSU Cascades, 7 July 2026
- HONK, Digital Campus Parking: What Changes for a Permit Office, 14 August 2026
