Tom Hartley: Bringing Change to Save your Change

We get it. Parking may not seem like the most intriguing subject of all time. You pull in, you pay, you park. But, for some reason, Bethlehem and its many residents seem to think that downtown Bethlehem doesn’t have enough parking. And if they do have enough parking, there are just too many other problems. The lots are confusing, the change for the meters is a pain and whatever happened to good old Hector when we had a problem? Well, actually, the lots are being made simpler by the minute (although, they were never confusing), the need for exact change for the meters is that of the past and, as much as we love Mr. Hector Nemes, we have another bright face who is taking on the challenges of the Parking in Downtown Bethlehem head on. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time you get to know the man with your best interest and convenience at heart – Mr. Tom Hartley.

In Tom’s short time in charge, he has already made significant changes. The pennies and nickels you once had to scrape out of sticky cup holders to feed the meters can stay in their place with the spilled Coca Cola and Bubbalicious glop. The days of forgetting (while the Authority is remembering!) your meter has run down are over as long as you have yourself a smart phone. And the $5 you have for parking in the garage for the week will now get you an extra park or two. While the changes set in place are already pushing Bethlehem and its way of parking forward, this is only the beginning. In Tom’s eyes, there is no option except excellence; excellence that will stand against any other authority or port in the industry. With a watchful eye and sharp mind for innovative change, the future holds as much as Mr. Hartley is ready to take on. Come join us in his vision for the future and see what the real deal behind parking in Downtown Bethlehem is all about!

SC: So first of all, I wanted to say welcome to the position because I understand you’re semi new.
TH: 2 years – not too long. To Bethlehem – new . [laughs]
SC: There seems to be a general consensus among the people that there’s never enough parking, so I wanted to put the rumor to rest once and for all. Just how many parking spots are in this lot and isn’t there another lot around here?
TH: There are 800 spaces in this garage and, other than Musikfest, it hasn’t been filled to capacity since I’ve been here. So, just on average, I’d say we probably have 250-300 spaces available any given day – other than Musikfest. The other garage is Walnut St. garage and there’s 777 spaces there and it’s probably closer to 85-90% capacity, so although you’ll find some spots there, it’s a little more challenging. There’s probably 50-100 spots available on any given day – however, that fluctuates depending on what’s happening downtown during special events and those kind of things.

SC: Just for the record, how much does it cost to park in the garage?
TH: 75 cents an hour. We lowered the rates in the garages and raised the rates on the streets just to be able to match supply with demand a little more. We charge a dollar an hour on the street and 75 cents per hour in the garages. We also have a program with DBA merchants called “Park N Shop” – we sell validation coupons to those merchants at a discounted rate; 20% off the 75 cents. We sell them to the merchants and they give them to their customers to be able to pay for their parking while they’re downtown.
SC: As many would probably wonder, what was it that made you want to work with the Parking Authority?
TH: Well, I have a parking background and plenty of years of industry experience. I was working in Middletown, Connecticut where their structure’s a little bit different. They have a Parking Department instead of a Parking Authority which basically means I reported directly to the mayor [over there]. What attracted me to Bethlehem, though, was several things. One thing was the dynamic of the community. Bethlehem’s poised itself very well coming out of the recession due to all the redevelopment that has been done. Obviously this goes back to many of the savvy elected officials that have put this community in a strong position as we come out of this recession. I think Bethlehem’s poised to grow and expand so it was a very attractive community to [come to].

SC: Definitely. I notice that you’ve done a lot of renovating and changing the way in which the systems work in here to make it more efficient and easy to use for the people of the city. If you could take a moment to explain what you’ve been doing or what the goal was so that anyone who has yet to be informed about the matter can come to a better understanding, I think that’d be cool.
TH: Well, when I came for my first interview I parked on the street and the first thing I noticed was that I had to have change for the meter – I didn’t have any change. Because of that I had to go find a merchant who happened to be open in order to get change and, thankfully, in the time that I was gone, I didn’t get a ticket. So when I went to my first interview, one of the first things I was already interested in launching were Smart Meters so we could create cashless payment systems to make it easier on the people who may not have change with them. I wanted to be able to pay for a single space meter with a credit card – and we successfully launched that.
The next thing we launched was Mobile Technology – I realize not everybody has a cell phone, but a lot of people do and a lot of the people that have cell phones have smart phones. We opened [the] ParkNow mobile [app] which is a major organization. They transfer the cost to the user per session but you only pay for the time that you park. So if I’m coming to a meeting, for example, and I think I’m going to be around an hour and it ends up being only 30 minutes, I can set my meter for an hour originally but stop it after 30 minutes and only pay for the time that I parked. For me, as a consumer, I can save a little money – which is nice, and then I don’t drive away leaving money in the meter that I didn’t use so I think that’s a nice feature. You only have to pay for the time you park. The other thing is, if I’m running over [time] – say, I get delayed or conversing about the good old days or whatever – I get an alert notification 15 minutes before the meter is up just to remind me to go back to my car and leave or if you and I decide to go out to eat or something, I can put more time on my meter … right from my cellphone.

SC: Wow, that’s really cool! I believe a lot of people will enjoy this addition because I know it’s a pain sometimes when you’re eating and have to count the minutes on the clock and can’t really enjoy what you’re doing. Cool. Another thing that caught my attention was the EZ Park Passes. I heard that’s coming fairly soon; I’ve heard rumblings of a release around the time of the White Party [blog post on the Party coming soon] or sometime around then. What’s the deal with this? Can we set the record straight?
TH: Well, we’re testing it right now. We don’t have a set agreement, but we’re very hopeful. The idea behind it is you connect it up to a USB at home and put money on the pass and then go and hang it in your car. You start it and stop it when you park so you don’t have to go out to the meter. The money on the pass will deduct based on the time you are parked, and when you are ready to leave, stop the pass and drive away. This serves as your meter; an in-vehicle meter that works on and off street. That’s not integrated with the garages yet though. It works with all street meter parking – it’s a meter that’s in your vehicle that you own and we hope to have an announcement on it soon.
SC: Well, I wish you the best of luck with that and am interested to see it in effect when it’s released. Make sure to let us know. I can imagine working with the parking authority comes with a lot of dissatisfied parkers over perceived fairness of their tickets. So, as the leader of this place, I’d imagine you want to establish a good relationship with the people but may come to a crossroads when you have to enforce the law as well. How do these two factors agree or disagree with each other and is there anything you’d like to say on the subject?
TH: Well, parking enforcement is really the balance of the needs of all key stakeholders. One of those needs is the merchants downtown. So, if we don’t enforce [the law], people will just come and park downtown on the street for free. Now, say, I’m a server at a restaurant – if the parking authority did not enforce, I would just go downtown, park on the street either in front of the restaurant or right down the street from the restaurant and I would just park there all day for free, taking away parking from costumers who would not be able to find a place to park when coming downtown because all the premium spaces were taken up. We try to balance the enforcement. One of the things to go back to with writing tickets is having convenient payment systems. As I mentioned, when I needed change and came back from getting the change, luckily I didn’t get a ticket. The more you make payment options easier, the better. You know, most people want to do the right thing and sometimes, quite frankly, there might be a broken meter. We want people to challenge that. We want people to say “Hey, by the way, my meter was broken” or “I just put [the change] in the wrong meter, I made a mistake, but my intentions were good”. We want to hear those kinds of things. If that’s the case, we check the problem out. The nice thing about Smart Meters and cell phone technology is we can see when people paid, when they didn’t, when they came, when they went and obviously people who tried to do the right thing – we want to give those folks the benefit of the doubt.

SC: In case the lots fill up, say it’s Musikfest or something big is going on, what do you suggest for parking? Is just an “every-man-for-themselves” kind of deal or are there any little inside secrets you can share about backup places to park?
TH: It depends on who you are. One of the things I noticed during my first Musikfest here was that the rates in the garages went to $10 and there was a big angst – and I would have a big angst with it – from local downtown businesses because if you come downtown and want just a soup and a salad or something, you don’t want to pay $10 to park in the garage when the meters are full. One of the things we did was we went back to the normal rate, so if you come down during Musikfest this August, North Street garage and Walnut Street garage are not $10 for the day, they’re still 75 cents an hour. We are going to offer all day parking for $5, which is actually cheaper than our daily rate right now which is $6 if you want to prepay. During Musikfest, I would look for the meters to turn. First thing I would do is check the North Street garage, and if that was full, then I would go to the meters and check the meter rates because that’s the best option. We’re going to be enforcing the meters at 3 hour rate intervals so costumers can come downtown and have a place to park.
SC: When you came in to this position – maybe before, if you were a parker or checking out what the parking in Bethlehem was like, what was the driving force behind wanting to switch things up a bit? Did you realize things needed immediate fixing or was it more of a gradual desire to improve?
TH: Both. There was a lot of low hanging fruit. There was no shortage of improvement opportunities and even just the opportunity to better maintain our assets. See, my mom taught me asset management when I was about 5 years old. I remember the lesson very well and the lesson was ‘Take Good Care of your Toys’. If you don’t take care of your toys, your friends are going to go to somebody else’s house and play with friends that have nice toys. That’s the way it is in Bethlehem. Our parking facilities are the first and last impression and, like I said, there’s no shortage of improvement opportunities with the facilities. We need to maintain them better then we have in the past. We need to continue to maintain them and it takes, obviously, money to do these things. One of the things I got a lot of feedback over was taking the rates from 50 cents to a dollar, for example, on street. [Note: The Bethlehem Parking Authority lowered off street rates and rose on street rates in order to “meet the equilibrium of supply and demand”]. Well, you can keep your rates so low that you exasperate your problem and not have any money to maintain your assets, so one of the things we wanted to do was leverage technology to gain some efficiencies – which we’ve done, internally. We can get real time maintenance notification on the Smart Meters when there’s a dead battery or a coin jam. We can track what our real use inventory is so when we need additional parking spaces, rather than going out and making a huge capital investment, we know exactly what the utilization of those spaces are and when they’re available and when they’re not. We can really manage our assets better to make sure we have the right number because parking spaces aren’t cheap to create. Those were the key things for me. I wanted to bring our assets up to industry standards and utilize technologies for the efficiencies. Those were, to me, the most self-evident things that needed fixing.

SC: Well, it was good to learn a bit about all of this, Tom, because I had been interested in the whole parking scenario downtown and the misconceptions that seem to run through the city. Thanks for your time and the information you provided. It’s pretty evident, just from us having this conversation, that the whole “there is no parking downtown” line is not true in the least bit. Before I wrap this up, if there is anything you would like to say or add to what you have already said that you think the people should or would like to know, please feel free.
TH: Well, I think there are a couple other misconceptions out there. I’ve read in the paper recently about the Commons Deck and driving customers away with multi-space meters. I think it’s important for people to know that the deck is more utilized this year than it was last year. It’s actually up 10% in utilization year-to-date. One of the things we do want to do is incorporate a voice in the community into daily operations. We are going to test some single space credit card meters, as it is, obviously, more convenient but it’s also more costly. Another one of the things we want to do is open up the bottom [of the Commons deck] and add some more parking spaces because, again, folks like convenience. It’s a nice, little, convenient deck behind the Commons for one to be able to park so we’re looking forward to opening that lower deck. We’re doing some work to refurbish the deck the first week in July – July 8th for the lower area and about 3 weeks in later July for the upper deck. The lower deck will be open after that first week – July 8th through July 14th, I think it is. That deck will be open and we encourage customers coming downtown to use it as we will have it up and running very soon.
SC: Well, thanks for your time. I think you do a good job juggling it all coming into the position and I wish you the best of success with all your future endeavors with the Parking Authority!

Don’t miss! The Bethlehem Parking Authority is now running a Valet Service. Our valet team provides a “unique sense of arrival and a fond farewell to our visitors”. The services are a flat $5 fee and run at ArtsQuest on Southside and Main St. North Side from 5pm-11pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. You can pay with any major credit card and the process is quite simple! Pull up to the valet podium and obtain your valet ticket. When you’re ready to retrieve your car later in the night, follow the instructions on the back of the ticket (as simple as texting for your vehicle) and have your car waiting for you when you return .. not the other way around. We intend to expand these services all across the city, but don’t skip out now! Be one of the first to try out our services and experience a night free of garages, meters and, best of all, worry!

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Note: Mark your calendars and start counting down because The White Party is coming! On July 12th on the top level of the North Street parking garage, the event of the summer is about to take place. Influenced by The Great Gatsby, ladies and gentlemen alike will dance and socialize and party on as drinks are flowing and summer is in the air. Dressed in all white, we intend to celebrate life and help out the Bethlehem Mounted Police for all their hard work by donating a portion of our proceeds to them. Tickets are already on sale and you can make sure to grab your spot by clicking here. A full post on the Party will be up on the blog in a short amount of time. Live out one of your dreams of partying like the Great Gatsby and join us in one of the summer’s top events!

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