Parking Plan at UCI Saves Time and Money

A team of UC Irvine officials is basking in national recognition, praise for saving a cool $1.4 million and even a measure of goodwill by usually cranky campus drivers.

What’s the secret? A compact parking plan.

An inspired four-year effort by campus officials to streamline the way students and staff buy parking permits this month won a national service quality award and inspired other California universities to look for lessons in the approach. It has saved taxpayers money by cutting costs and shaved time off the wait for permits.

“People come in to buy a permit, it takes less than a minute and they say, ‘Is that all? Am I done?’ and that’s what’s most pleasing to us,” said Mike Delo, campus parking director and leader of the team. “They’re surprised at how quick it is now.”

The system redesign is called BYPASS, a hefty acronym that stands for Buy Your Permit Automatically Sans Standing-in-line. It is part of a larger, campuswide effort that has won four national awards for rethinking services with an eye toward better efficiency.

“It’s a common-sense approach,” Vice Chancellor Wendell C. Brase said. “Before, size and complexity were actually rewarded. . . . Now we ask, ‘Are we doing this the best way?’ ”

Parking officials took that to mind when they looked at the paper-heavy system in place to issue about 13,000 permits and decided to “start from scratch” Delo said. Among the innovations:

* It once took 21 steps to issue a permit to campus employees; now it’s down to five. Part of the reason: Drivers who visit the parking office no longer fill out applications for permits. Instead, the data are accessed directly from the registrar and payroll computers, eliminating a whole tier of data entry and filing.

* Students once stood in deep lines to buy permits--now they have the option to buy them with a credit card and a Touch-Tone phone with a 24-hour, automated phone service.

* Faculty and staff used to begin the years by waiting in lines for a new permit. Now they can buy a permit that doesn’t expire and sign up to have the cost automatically deducted from their paychecks.

* The system is more user friendly. Parking permits, which now are handy tags that hang from rearview mirrors, have bar codes to make them easy to track. Scheduled visitors to campus check in at one of four kiosks where computers print a one-day permit and they can get directions.

While mulling their strategies, Delo and his staff had to adjust some of their own attitudes. In the past, for instance, permit buyers provided their license plate numbers on the applications when they bought permits. Scrapping the application and switching to a database dependent on student and payroll meant sacrificing that piece of information--and any chance of clamping down on students who share permits.

After thinking about it, though, Delo and officials decided they didn’t care if students handed off their passes to roommates. “They use it one at a time,” Delo said with a shrug, adding that the benefits of whittling down the process far outweighed a few lost sales.

The $1.4 million in savings was found in time-saving and staff reduction through attrition, with Delo’s staff shrinking from two dozen full-time employees in 1990 to 15 as computer records replaced paperwork. A study of the parking office staff found that 252 hours were spent processing permits last year--down dramatically from the 1,268 hours devoted to the task in 1992.

UC Irvine, with an enrollment of more than 17,100 students, is expected to be the fastest growing UC campus in the next decade, and the new parking permit system is built to handle that growth without increasing staff, Delo said.

Also working on the project were: Stacey Murren, Diana Bernardez, Terry Carter, Michelle Richards, Kristin Whipple, Dale Chapman, Linda Purtle, Jason Ziebarth, Eric Allton and Dina Ochoa.

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Streamlined Savings

UC Irvine parking officials have cut costs and earned national recognition by finding a more efficient way to sell and track parking permits. The new approach uses computers, fewer paper forms and a phone-in service to speed up the entire process.

Hours per year to process ‘97: 252

Number of permits sold ‘97: 23,691