Page 124 - Security Today, July/August 2019

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parking management
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campuslifesecurity.com | JULY/AUGUST 2019
Getting an Auto Boost
Private university gets help with its 60 parking lots
Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, was established in 1875, and has since grown to become the second largest private university and largest religious-sponsored institution in the Unit- ed States. The school lies 45 miles south of Salt Lake City and sits on approximately 560 acres at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The university serves 32,000 undergraduate students, around 7,000 of whom reside on campus, and an additional 5,000 members of faculty and staff.
Business Challenge
BYU takes its responsibility to provide a secure environment for stu- dents, staff and visitors very seriously and is particularly conscien- tious about maintaining order on its vast campus while still remain- ing unobtrusive. With 60 parking lots totaling around 17,000 spaces, and 65,000 vehicles registering for parking permits each semester, maintaining control over the campus from a parking perspective is no small feat. For BYU, parking management initiatives are a security feature, helping to keep campus inhabitants safe. Finding ways to manage such a large volume of vehicles while still providing user- friendly parking facilities is a significant challenge for BYU’s parking enforcement team.
Until recently, BYU employed a stickered permitting system for the vast majority of campus parking needs. Students and faculty came to the parking office each year and registered their single vehicles to park in certain areas or lot types. They then received a non-transfer- able adhesive decal, displaying an expiration date, to place on their vehicle. To accommodate visitors, attendants in designated parking lots provided visitor placards to be placed in vehicles for the duration of their stay. Handhelds were used by the parking enforcement team to issue citations for parking infractions, which were downloaded to the central database when the officers returned at the end of a shift.
At two gates, which control vehicle access to the most central portion of the BYU campus, RFID cards were issued to allow a sub- set of permitted vehicles to trigger the gate to open. Unfortunately, the cards had a high failure rate, based in large part on their wind- shield placement, which would expose them to extreme tempera- tures and eventually ruin them. For each failure, the RFID card replacement cost the university around $30. This process was both inefficient and costly.
Needs
Steve Goodman, technology architect and manager of the communi- cations center for BYU’s police department, worked with a BYU busi-