Amping up parking enforcement at Cornell University
Cornell University upgrades to Security Center AutoVu™ to enhance parking enforcement and manage operations in 276 exterior parking lots.
The company
Cornell University is a private Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. Over 21,000 students frequent the 2000-acre main campus. The university offers 276 exterior parking lots and two parking garages, ranging from 10 to 1100 spaces each, to accommodate vehicle owners and drivers coming onto campus. A mix of permitted and time-limited parking options are available.
The challenge
Always staying on the cusp of the latest developments, Cornell University was looking for a better way to enforce parking regulations and improve compliance. While officers worked tirelessly to enforce parking areas on foot, sometimes lots would only be checked once or twice a day. Handling lot counts was even more tedious for staff, who found it difficult to juggle permit checks, citations issuance and vehicle counting.
The solution
Easy parking enforcement
Operators select the zone to enforce and then drive up and down lanes. The AutoVu cameras scan license plates and alert operators to unpermitted, overtime or scofflaw vehicles.
Increased operator efficiency
With the AutoVu system, officers enforce the lots more efficiently than they could on foot. “Our officers can identify all scofflaws across campus within one hour,” explained Ross.
Convenient mobile office
Officers can now patrol the campus, or pull over and take a call or look information up in the system. Creating a mobile dispatch unit helps Cornell fully maximize resources.
Simple lot counts
The AutoVu system automatically counts parked vehicles as officers drive through the lots. Field managers can pull occupancy reports and use the data to make strategic parking decisions.
“When AutoVu was hosted on our local servers, we could only use our system 50% of the time. With AutoVu Managed Services, all of our headaches have disappeared, and we’ve had zero downtime.”
Amy Lynne Ross, Parking Systems and Communications Manager, Cornell University
Results
Two AutoVu Sharp ALPR cameras were installed on a parking enforcement vehicle. Immediately, officers were covering more lots in less time, identifying more scofflaws and promoting better compliance across the campus. Unfortunately, compatibility issues with the University’s IT policies began hindering the system’s performance. Scheduled network updates caused an unpredictable, and often frustrating, environment in which to run the AutoVu system.
Genetec recommended moving to AutoVu Managed Services (AMS), the cloud-hosted parking enforcement service. AMS offered Cornell University a powerful and reliable ALPR system, without the hassle and costs of procuring servers, managing updates or handling fixes. Since then, there has been zero downtime. Officers use the AutoVu-equipped vehicle to enforce a permitted shopping plaza lot and 13 other time-limited zones known as flex lots.