By: Josh Cantor, CAPP

For many of us in the parking and transportation industry, the normal hustle and bustle came to a screeching halt a year ago along with most of society. Without the everyday crises and constantly getting ready for the next event, I felt bored at work. For once, parking and transportation didn’t feel as involved in the daily life of the university. I spent my days watching our revenue fall and having to make round after round of service and budget cuts.

We hosted limited events for our college students such as drive-in movies, which required the coordination of parking to make it happen. However, with the start-up of COVID testing in fall and the vaccination clinics going on now, my office has found ourselves front and center again. Testing sites involve the use of parking garages and surface lots as well as the spaces actually needed for vehicles to park to go to the indoor sites.

With in-person attendance currently limited to 250 people for events, it may be a while before we have large scale concerts at our arena and concert halls, athletic events, conferences, career fairs, etc. Despite these restrictions, staying involved in the everyday business of the university is important as we still remain the first and last impression of our customers. As we know, in our industry, the small requests we often field such as where we can allow a crane or a dumpster for a construction project or where a special guest or news crew van can park, are just as important as how we handle large-scale events and everyday parking. It’s imperative that we still do our best to know what is happening in our jurisdictions so we can play that critical support role most activities require. That is, unless you happen to have a Chick-Fil-A manager you can call in a pinch.