SJSU and ParkStash Partnership Success Story
How ParkStash built a sustainable parking and transportation platform for SJSU community
Note: This is our first article in a Multi Part Series regarding this partnership.
Background
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, San José State provides a comprehensive university education, granting bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in 250 areas of study. With approximately 36,000 students and nearly 4,300 employees, SJSU is an essential partner in the economic, cultural and social development of Silicon Valley and California. Located in the midst of Silicon Valley, the university has global technology leaders like Adobe, PayPal, and Cisco right in its backyard, with companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook not too far away.
Challenges
SJSU has just over 6,000 parking spaces spread over 3 garages and 9 parking lots. Over 43% of SJSU campus community commute to campus. This means over 15,000 students driving and looking for a space to park. On average students spent 30 mins circling around looking for a parking space!
According to Eric Cross, Parking Services Manager, the biggest challenges that SJSU were facing included:
- Shortage of just in time alternative parking inventory due to which they had to buy bulk parking space leases from private parking lot owners to meet overflow demand leading to high cost
- No mobile platform to show and book available parking spaces
- High traffic congestion near University
- Handling cash/kiosks and physical permit purchase
- Bad reputation on customer experience
- High operational cost (overstaffing) due to lack of data for more efficient forecasting
- No advance visibility on # of cars attending for major events in each garage
- Lost revenue in unpaid parking citations
When ParkStash stepped in to provide a solution by offering unused parking spaces and Live occupancy status of SJSU garages, Eric Cross was not too sure at first. But he decided to do a trial run and measure engagement of users for ParkStash app.
Solution
To meet the challenges faced by Parking Department, ParkStash offered the services as show in the image below. To develop and release every functionality, we sat down with parking department to understand their pain and challenges, came up with a solution which was then approved and adapted by the department. ParkStash SJSU Partnership focused on enabling Virtual Office during COVID 19.
The modules that SJSU currently use are a part of ParkStash Enterprise® Gold Package Solution. This package consists of the following modules:
ParkStash Enterprise Consumer App which includes:
- ParkStash Enterprise Parking Garage Occupancy with Navigation
- ParkStash Enterprise Color Coded Announcements
- ParkStash Enterprise Ticketing and Parking Reservation
- ParkStash Enterprise Bus Routes
- ParkStash Enterprise Mobile Citation Payments
- ParkStash Enterprise Just In Time Inventory
ParkStash Enterprise Dashboard which includes:
- ParkStash Enterprise Detailed Occupancy Analytics & Reporting Software
- ParkStash Enterprise Announcements
- ParkStash Enterprise Garage Abnormality Notifications Software
- ParkStash Enterprise Event Tickets Reservation Bundle with Live Tracking and Dynamic Pricing
- ParkStash Enteprise Citation Analytics and Reporting Software
- ParkStash Enterprise Roles
Impact & Results
What started as a 30-day ParkStash trial run in February 2019 soon became a huge success and our app is now an integral part of Spartan Community. ParkStash is now the Official Parking App of SJSU.
Our information is live on their website.
The success of SJSU Partnership with ParkStash was published in CFO’s Spring 2019 Newsletter -https://www.sjsu.edu/adminfinance/about/newsletters/2019/1/upd_1/index.html
According to Eric Cross, with ParkStash, SJSU was able to achieve:
- Over 50% reduction in traffic congestion and circling around time
- Over 50% reduction in trip count
- Over 50% cost savings through just in time inventory
- Over 24% improvement in operational efficiency
- $500,000+ saved in needed LED Signage
Environmental Impact
According to a study by Professor Donald Shoup, 30% traffic congestion is caused by people actively looking for parking. By eliminating circling around time of students, staff and faculty by providing live real time occupancy of garages with navigation and alternative parking spots, ParkStash has helped reduce gas consumption and CO2 emissions helping the university take a step towards fulfilling its sustainability vision and objectives.
Testimonials
From Mr. Charlie Faas, SJSU VP of Admin/CFO
“
ParkStash has been extremely successful and exceeded our expectations in terms of:
- Improving parking experience at SJSU
- Reducing circling around looking for parking (Average circling around before partnership was about 35 minutes and after partnership is half of that)
- Reducing traffic congestion at and near SJSU
It gets people to their parking faster. Now, when people know the Fourth Street garage is full and the Tenth Street garage is open, they can redirect and go directly there. The circling stops, the CO2 emissions come way down.
”
From Mr. Eric Cross, SJSU Parking Services Manager
“
ParkStash has been instrumental in helping provide traffic control in our parking system. ParkStash enables our parking community to make informed decisions in their daily commute options by providing them current Information about the available parking status within our community.
ParkStash also provides our department the ability to send out targeted notices to our parking customers informing them of parking/traffic impacts and how they can mitigate these impacts. In addition to providing us with parking information, ParkStash provides our campus with a scalable and dynamic short-term parking option that can be strategically deployed in areas close to parking impacts. ParkStash can provide several spaces up to as many as 100+ parking spaces without the need of getting into a long-term parking lease. Because of ParkStash’s business model we are able to provide a more dynamic and fluid service to our customers.
You could easily be late for or miss a class. If that’s occurring for a student is a tragedy. However, if that’s a faculty member, you’ve now impacted as many as, you know, 40 to 100 students who are depending on this person to impart on them the lessons that they’re going to need for graduation. The app has made a huge difference for large events like commencement as well.
It just has really been a game-changer for us.
”
From Oscar Arguello, Owner of Mother Olsons Property Management Company
“
Before, we were losing $1,000 to $1500 monthly. Now, we are earning that amount of money with ParkStash without basically doing nothing. Apart from generating revenue, ParkStash has also helped in the safety and security of my properties with their enforcement technology and segmenting my lot with their e-eprmit solution. Instead of assumptions, I am now able to make data driven decisions by checking my parking lot occupancy and seeing at what time the utilization of the spots has been the most. For those times, I can rent out more spots to maximize my revenue.”
”
From Ray Castellon, First United Methodist Church Parking Manager
“
Delightful Experience as a host! 3X revenue!
I decided to rent my parking lot in ParkStash. Within 2 weeks I saw my occupancy rate of parking spaces almost double! I am so happy with their service, I get the license plate no. Of vehicle parking plus they have scheduling which allows 3X revenue from 1 space! Definitely recommend people to rent out their private spaces on ParkStash.
”
From Richard Ajluni, Homeowner near SJSU
“
ParkStash is simple and easy to use. The company identifies its customers and I am able to easily toggle back and forth to see when my driveway is unavailable. The university doesn’t have enough parking spaces for the students. Even if students buy a parking permit for the semester, there’s no guarantee they’ll have a space. ParkStash’s app is a win-win situation for everyone.
This is the sharing economy; this is Silicon Valley, I think it’s sort of the same ethos as Uber and Lyft — getting the best yield out of resources in the context of sharing.
Having a car in his driveway while my family is out also deters would-be burglars. My driveway has a security camera, and the app tells me the kind of car a driver who books the space has, so I know who is there. ParkStash has driver names and contact information so drivers are deterred from trying anything sketchy. The app allows me to earn an extra $100 or so a month without doing anything more than touching a few buttons on the app.
”
From Ted Hayduk, Professor in sports management
“
I downloaded it last week. I’ve been using it on the drive in in the morning. I’ve really enjoyed it, it’s been easy.
”
From Sukhmanpreet Kaur, SJSU Student
“
ParkStash has made my life a million times easier!
”
From Jozy Prabhu, SJSU Student
“
Been using this now, and it was super helpful in saving time!
”
From Helen Tilmann, SJSU Employee
“
What an incredible app you have created. Its going to relieve my major angst when I have to go into college later in the day.
”
