TTU Parking: Enforcement

Using a system that issues nearly 34,000 tickets per semester on Texas Tech’s campus, Transportation and Parking Services has its work cut out when it comes to catching parking violators in any of the nearly 20,000 parking spaces on campus.

But thanks to new technology, enforcement is becoming easier for the department. A new paperless system, introduced in 2010, uses license plate recognition technology to cite violators in parking lots by simply driving by and emailing citations directly from the parking system, rather than the former method that employed the help of thousands of instantly recognizable yellow envelopes.

Eric Crouch, managing director for Transportation and Parking Services, said the license plate recognition system has contributed to an increase in the number of tickets issued on campus, but also to more cooperation from drivers.

“Our goal was to work the lots more frequently and get better enforcement of the lots and hopefully then, better voluntary compliance out of folks parking. Then you can sell more permits because there’s less spoilage in the lot from people who don’t belong, and so we did see a spike this last fall. I’m hoping once we have more data so we can see what it does, I’m hoping it comes back down and maybe a little lower so we can figure out the enforcement coverage, but that’s good because really the permits generate better revenue.”

Besides the thousands of citations parking services hands out each semester, there are other enforcement methods the department uses to make sure drivers park on campus legally, including some that can strike fear into the hearts of campus drivers.

The department has a contract with a local tow service, Lubbock Wrecker Service, although Crouch said that towing is actually a rare occasion for violators who occupy another driver’s paid parking space or violate traffic laws.

“Generally, these days, all we tow for is reserved space,” Crouch said. “If the owner really wants the car gone, if you’re obstructing traffic or doing something dangerous, fire lanes, that sort of stuff, or if an area reserved lot or residence hall lot or a student lot where permit holders have paid to park and there’s no open parking. We’ll go in and pull all the violators out, and that doesn’t happen very often.”

Booting is also another form of enforcement, Crouch said, and he prefers it over towing for several reasons.

“I much prefer to boot. One, because more people get to see that. It’s just like when a police officer pulls someone over for speeding: it’s about the citation for that person, but it’s more about all the other drivers who are seeing that enforcement because it slows them down. Same thing with the boot.”

Using a boot to penalize violators rather than towing their cars is also the cheaper and easier option for the department, Crouch said.

“The other thing is with the towing contract, as soon as we tow somebody, we owe the towing company money for that tow,” Crouch said. “So with a boot, all we’re out is the personnel time, so there’s a lot more flexibility for us to be able to work with someone if there was some extenuating circumstance or something. It’s a whole lot easier  for us to say, ‘OK, well, we’ll waive that fee.'”

Vehicle boots, Crouch said, also serve an educational purpose for those who find themselves caught by parking services after multiple tickets, and are aimed at ceasing the flow of citations.

“Outstanding parking tickets, generally, is when that happens. We also do one that we call the educational boot, and so the first time you get six tickets in a semester, we put a boot on the vehicle, and if you’ve never been impounded or anything like that, more than anything the boot is aimed at finding out what in the world was going on. Nobody should be racking up that many tickets that fast, and so the only way to get that boot off is to talk to a supervisor, or me, or an associate director, so we can ask that question, ‘What were you doing?’ The majority of the time it’s, ‘Oh, well, I keep running late, and I’m not managing my time,’ or whatever.”

Crouch said that enforcement rules, especially with students, can cause some violators to get angry over a citation or a boot they received while on campus, but he also said he hopes students will see enforcement as a privilege and a service, not a nuisance. Good ideas can also flow between students and staff, and vice versa, Crouch said, despite any anger or irritation over a violation.

“There are days when it is not pleasant,” Crouch said. “But, most people, once you sit down with them, even angry people who are cussing at me and being ugly, once you sit them down and you explain, ‘This is why, and this is the process we’ve gone through to get to where we’re at.’ Then they at least understand why we’re where we’re at. Then we can start talking, ‘OK, so what are your ideas?'”

Although parking services issues thousands of parking tickets a semester – upwards of 100,000 over the last two years – they do show some leniency for first-time violators, Crouch said. Students have better things to spend their money on than parking tickets, Crouch said, so the department offers each student a one-time pass for a citation that waives the parking fee as well as educates students about parking and transportation rules.

“The first ticket that anybody gets on campus, we’ll dismiss,” Crouch said. “The intent behind that is to use that as an opportunity to say, ‘OK, there’s the rules. Here is where you find them. Here’s what went wrong. Here’s how not to do them again,’ and we’re actually working on an online way to do that so we can make sure everybody gets the same information every time. We also do, at the beginning of the semester, usually a coupon dismissal. So, you could get a second one, if you wanted to, but really those things are aimed at putting more information in people’s hands.”

Crouch said the goal of his department is to make sure campus drivers follow the rules for the sake of all those utilizing parking on campus.

“When I started here, I thought, ‘It’s two yellow lines and a curb. It cannot be that hard.’ And you get here and you’re like, ‘Holy cow, there’s a lot of parts to this.’ So my vision, starting in 2006, was to really work closely with our stakeholders because at the end of the day, it’s y’all’s parking system. What is it you’re wanting, and what do you want us to accomplish?”

Related articles:

TTU Parking: By the Numbers

TTU Parking: Money

TTU Parking: Garages

TTU Parking: The Future