T2 PARCS Pay-on-Phone Provides a Smooth Payment Experience at Texas A&M, Reducing Parking Garage Congestion
By T2
Published: March 22, 2024
Mobile Payment Solution Solves Bottlenecking Problems in University Garages
Background
Opened in 1876, Texas A&M has a long, storied history, unique traditions, and special campus lingo that make it a one-of-a-kind university. Currently, 77,491 students (known as Aggies) are enrolled with most attending the main campus in College Station, Texas. Texas A&M has 42,000 annual permits issued and approximately 5,000 transient transactions occur each day.
Texas A&M University Transportation Services manages roughly 37,000 parking spaces, the most of any university in the US, which includes 138 parking lots and 7 garages. They have approximately 193 full-time staff, 65 wage employees, and 402 student workers on their team. A T2 customer since 2008, Transportation Services uses T2 Flex, and played a pivotal role in the evolution of T2 PARCS.
Challenges
Texas A&M students want to park as close as possible to class, and often opt to use the university’s gated visitor garages rather than permitted student parking spaces. With twenty minutes in between classes, traffic flow in the garages needed to be quick and smooth for students. However, since every parker followed the same entry and exit lanes, backups were occurring at the exit. “At all our visitor facilities, we experienced a crunch period of people coming in and going out in the same window of time,” recounts Lynn Wiggs, CAPP, Associate Director of Texas A&M Transportation Services.
Each gated transient facility offers the option of automated pay stations at key pedestrian entry points. However, data shows a large percentage of customers preferred to pay at the gate. “While the transaction at the gate may only take twenty to thirty seconds, it’s the number of people who pull up and are not ready—they don’t have their credit card out or they’re looking for their ticket,” said Wiggs.
The Central Campus Garage with 620 spaces sits in the middle of campus and is very popular. As such the morning loading, evening unloading and class change periods create a lot of congestion. Even with two entrance lanes and two exit lanes, Texas A&M Transportation Services was seeing backups sometimes up to the fifth floor. “As much as we hated to, there were times when we had to raise the gates and lose revenue to relieve the issue. People would call us stuck in the line saying they couldn’t get out, asking what’s going on,” said Dell Hamilton, Manager for Parking Access & Maintenance of Texas A&M Transportation Services.
Wiggs relayed how they needed to ease the burden on staff from this highly congested garage. “When staff are trying to go out to lunch or leave for the day, they want to just drive away without delays. Anything we could do to help improve service, we were willing to try.”
Texas A&M Transportation Services wanted to try our T2 PARCS Pay-on-Phone (PARCS PoP) mobile payment solution to resolve their severe bottlenecking issues. “It had to be seamless for the customer. We’re all about making processes easier, streamlined, and focused for our community. Any time we can use technology to help mitigate the time in the lane, we’re going to try to do so,” Wiggs said. She had high expectations and knew T2 would deliver.
Solutions
Texas A&M Transportation Services implemented T2 PARCS PoP to improve throughput in their facilities in addition to offering PARCS pay in lane and pay on foot. Parkers can now use their iOS or Android device to scan the QR code on their entry ticket, then pay on their phones with Google Pay, PayPal, or a credit card any time before departure. A QR code to scan at exits is generated on the receipt.
T2 PARCS PoP, white labeled with the Texas A&M brand, was easy for campus patrons to use, was quickly adopted, and significantly reduced garage congestion. Our mobile payment solution enhanced Transportation Services’ customer experience and eased the staff’s burden of handling a large volume of calls from parkers waiting to exit garages. “It’s helped throughput in the lanes. It just works, and it’s easy to use,” said Hamilton.
While the team still offers the T2 PARCS pay-on-foot option, T2 PARCS PoP has all the functionalities of a traditional kiosk, including validations. With a per-transaction pricing structure, the fee can be passed on to the parker so operations such as Texas A&M Transportation Services retain 100% of the revenue generated. Adoption of our solution has also reduced the department’s expenditure for hardware maintenance.
Results
With the soft launch of T2 PARCS PoP mobile payment solution in February 2023 – a slower time of year for the university – customers began using it immediately. “Students are very good at adapting to technology. We didn’t advertise the solution initially, we just wanted to see how people used it,” said Wiggs. At the beginning of the Fall semester, the number of transactions skyrocketed without issue. In the first 11 months, there were over 48,000 transactions and the adoption rate increased fivefold from there.
“If you hear nothing, that means it’s working,” Hamilton said. The team was also impressed by how T2 PARCS PoP integrated seamlessly into our unified platform. “We’re all about a single pane of glass. We can run one report, and it’s all stored there.”
Texas A&M University Transportation Services appreciated our 24/7 open line of communication and commitment to doing what it takes to ensure our customers succeed. When going live with T2 PARCS PoP, “the senior product manager of T2 PARCS was on the other end of the phone ready to pick it up,” said Hamilton. He noted what distinguishes T2 from other companies: “It’s often the case that employees at parking management technology companies have never run a parking operation or were never a part of one. It’s wise to partner with people from the industry who were operators or worked in an operation. T2 gets it. They understand the pains and challenges.”
Wiggs is impressed with our customer care and engagement. “With the T2 Customer Community, events such as Connect and Reconnects, and the quarterly customer newsletter containing updates, T2 stays engaged with the customer.”
The department is currently working with T2 to implement license plate recognition (LPR) in additional gated facilities and is excited about plans to implement T2 Tempo, our time-based parking solution. We are excited to work with Texas A&M Transportation Services on all their projects, and more to come!
If you have a parking problem, T2 has a solution. Contact us to learn more about how T2 PARCS PoP can make every trip a smooth journey for you and your patrons.
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