Campus Challenges: An Offstreet User Conference Conversation

Data is Everywhere, But It Doesn’t Talk to Each Other

Ask almost any campus parking director how many systems they pull data from, and the answer is usually three or four. Parkmobile. T2. TIBA. Offstreet. Semester permit databases. Each one telling a different part of the story.

Josh Cantor at George Mason University put it plainly: he’s “shooting in the dark” on semester permit holders. He can see daily transactions but has no unified view of who’s parking, how they’re paying, what hours they’re using, or how long they’re staying.

What schools are doing about it:

• Ohio State spent five years building an in-house aggregated database pulling from Parkmobile, TIBA, and Offstreet. His biggest lesson: establish consistent definitions before you aggregate. (Is your occupancy 80% or 67%? Depends on whether you count ADA spaces. Pick one and stick with it.)
  
  
• UC Boulder is taking a different approach, using Mistall as a visualization and aggregation layer that queries systems directly via secure connections, bypassing the need to build a data lake from scratch.
  
  
• The group agreed on a sequencing principle: you have to nail descriptive analytics (what happened) before you can build predictive (what will happen) or prescriptive (what to do about it). Campuses trying to jump straight to AI-powered recommendations without a solid data foundation will miss the variables they need.
  
  
• Lots of campus parking teams are interested in data, but they might not have the tools that other university parking teams do. Here’s a final recommendation: Start small - try using CoPilot or approved AI tools to start pulling data trends and recommendations. 

Events and Athletics: The Coordination Failure

This was the most emotionally charged topic at the table. Across nearly every school, the same story: parking is the last to know and the first to deal with the consequences.

Athletics takes over parking lots on game days, collects the revenue, and leaves the parking department to manage traffic flow with no financial upside. Event hosts schedule large gatherings without ever thinking about parking logistics. One school was told just weeks before the season that they had two Friday games, displacing approximately 7,000 people with no alternative plan in place.

What schools are doing about it:

• Western Carolina University started charging on Saturdays and brought in towing companies to enforce. Small step, but it's reclaiming some control.
  
  
• UManitoba and UWLAX are both moving toward a formal policy: submit your parking request within 48 hours or it won't be fulfilled. Late fees are on the table.
  
  
• UWLAX switched a state track meet from a 20-step T2 permitting process nobody knew how to use, to Offstreet QR codes set up three weeks in advance - and generated $50,000 in revenue from an event that previously cost more than it made.
  
  

The broader takeaway: the campuses gaining ground are the ones setting policies that force earlier coordination, rather than absorbing last-minute chaos.

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Permit Abuse and Link Sharing

QR codes shared on group chats. Time limits bypassed by re-registering. Employees using guest validation links for daily parking. These aren’t edge cases,  they’re happening at scale at multiple campuses.

The challenge exists when a link is shareable and there's no identity layer, abuse can sometimes be inevitable.

What schools are doing about it:

• UC Riverside hid the QR code behind the front desk at the student health center. Staff now register patients directly, or a student with an iPad manages the page in the lobby. Low-tech, but it stopped the abuse cold.
  
  
• UCLA's approach: treat it as the department's problem, not parking's. Since revenue is collected either way, they use a blacklist to lock out known employee plates, though the list can be long and hard to maintain.
  
  
• The real fix: SSO and role-based accounts, where a student will see different permit options than that of a staff member for example. This is confirmed in development on the Offstreet roadmap.

Serving Visitors Who Aren't Comfortable Going Digital

Every campus has them: older visitors, patients, caregivers, and guests who are confused by phone-based parking or who simply prefer a human interaction. This came up most acutely around medical facilities and health centers, but it's a broader challenge.

Josh at UC Riverside described a pay station that ran out of receipt paper… and older visitors who stood waiting, convinced they needed a receipt before they could leave. Yasser (UCR) has a botanical garden on campus that serves an older crowd who will pay more to avoid using their phone.

What schools are doing about it:

• UC Riverside made receipts optional instead of default. Visitors stopped waiting at the machine. Support calls dropped noticeably. The insight: they didn't actually want a receipt, they just assumed they needed one.
  
  
• UWLAX removed pay stations entirely. There was significant pushback at first… but visitors are now happy with the change.
  
  
• UWLAX also noted that the Health Science Center (serving elderly patients and Alzheimer's caregivers) discovered that having staff with iPads outside is essential. Meeting people where they are, rather than expecting them to navigate a phone flow, made all the difference.

The through-line across all four challenges: the campuses making the most progress aren't waiting for a perfect solution. They're sharing workarounds, setting policies, and building toward better infrastructure one step at a time. That peer-to-peer knowledge sharing was one of the most valuable parts of the day.

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