By Diana Alarcon, CAPP

Big cities met at the IPMI 2022 Conference to discuss what’s happening in their communities. We had approximately 20 cities participate. One of the leading topics: how we are all managing the curb? The conversation then dived into how variable/demand-based pricing for on-street and loading/unloading fit into this equation of the new parking needs in a post-pandemic landscape.

For the past three years, the City of Omaha has been piloting technology on managing the curb. They are now ready to put it into full effect and have drafted policy for the program. We discussed how to pool all the different legislation and policy together so the industry can have benchmarks and best practices to help each other.

For me, what was exciting to learn is that the City of Detroit has been developing an application that is integrated with many industry vendors that would allow us to track origin and destination of people moving. This is not just cars, but trucks, sightseeing tours, people on bikes, and scooters. This opportunity allows us to establish policy for deliveries such as Fed Ex, UPS, etc.   We need to include how technology will work for deliveries to local small businesses.

We look forward to continuing discussions on these issues and how we can share information for success to all in our organization.

Diana Alarcon, CAPP, is director for the Nashville Department of Transportation & Multimodal Infrastructure.