Following a year that saw several changes to the university’s parking system, the University of Indianapolis added a new online website, the UIndy Parking Portal, in order to modernize and streamline UIndy’s ticketing system. The portal was launched on March 6, according to an email from Vice President for Student and Campus Affairs and Dean of Students Kory Vitangeli.
The website is designed to allow students, faculty and staff to log in and see their permits, according to Assistant Chief of UIndy Police Hailey Padgett-Riley. They are also able to see and pay any tickets they have on their account. Students, faculty and staff can use a credit card to pay their tickets on the portal. The website also has an option to request temporary parking passes.
Padgett-Riley said that while faculty and staff can request a temporary pass for visitors through the portal. Visitors themselves cannot request those passes. Visitors have to have someone sponsor them in order to get the pass. If a visitor receives a parking ticket, they can go to the parking portal and create a guest account to pay, Padgett-Riley said. Visitors, along with students, faculty and staff, can appeal the citation on the portal as well as check the status of their appeal.
According to Padgett-Riley, the software the university uses for the parking portal is designed by T2 Systems, which is based in Indianapolis. As a result of UIndy Police starting to use the software, Padgett-Riley said, they have had to change the way they enforce parking.
“Instead of writing those paper tickets with the carbon copy on the back that we have been writing forever, you can now use tablets, which we use iPad Minis,” Padgett-Riley said. “We have two parking enforcement officers and they have those iPads and they can actually write or create tickets and then they have a mobile printer that prints out from the iPad. So that iPad is tied into the portal and to T2 [Systems] data. All they have to do is type in a permit number and it pulls up the whole registration—who’s supposed to have it, what car it’s supposed to be, where they’re allowed to park—and then we just kind of compare it and make that citation decision based on that.”
Padgett-Riley said that next academic year the university will be using the online portal to have students, faculty and staff fill out their parking registration forms. She said that in the past, someone had to manually enter each parking permit into their system. But, by using the online portal, the registration process will be easier and faster for all the parties involved.
“There will be no waiting in line, no coming in person,” Padgett-Riley said. “You can do it all from home, from your residence hall, from your office and that will start around August…and those [parking passes] will actually be sent to you. So, if you’re a student, they’ll be sent to the residence halls. If you’re a commuter, they’ll be mailed to you. If you’re faculty/staff, that would be sent to your department.”
The university has also hired two new part-time parking enforcement officers, Padgett-Riley said. These officers started at the beginning of January, before the portal was launched, and their job is to act as a supplement to UIndy Police when it comes to parking enforcement.
“We have two gentlemen who…you may see in a Ford pickup truck,” Padgett-Riley said. “They don’t have anything marked on their vehicle, but they do wear khaki cargo pants and a polo and a jacket, when it’s chilly, that says UIndy Parking Enforcement. They are totally dedicated to citations and keeping up with our parking policies.”
UIndy Police is still involved in ticketing, Padgett-Riley said. She said that UIndy Police is still in the process of transitioning to the software, but once that transition is done, they expect it to make things easier in the long run.
“We’re [UIndy Police] still trying to get used to everything and what all of this, the system, can do and how it can help us and continue to streamline processes,” Padgett-Riley said. “We were the ones that proposed it [the software], [and] we are the ones that have been working to implement it.”
