“Excuse Me, My Parking
Meter Is Calling To Say It’s About To Expire Duncan Solutions’ Merger To Make Parking More Convenient For All Milwaukee, WI – Imagine your parking meter being able to send you a warning that it is about to expire -- or being able to add time to your parking meter from wherever you are just by calling your cell phone. And wouldn’t it be so much more convenient if you could just slide your credit card through the meter instead of searching for the right coins and inserting them! Well, those features – and more – are now available for parking meter users, along with new capabilities for those in charge of administering them, with the merged creation of Duncan Solutions, Inc. — the first company to provide such a large and diversified umbrella of products and services for the parking and enforcement industries. Under that umbrella are single-space and multiple-space coin-operated parking meters, new credit card and cell phone payment meters, meters that cover up to 10 parking spaces, meter and enforcement management software that allows administrators to know instantly if a meter is broken or being tampered with, citation processing and collection services, outbound phone calls and mailings to assist municipalities with collecting delinquent fines, and even lending programs for financially-strapped communities with parking equipment and service needs. One of the company’s newest products is the AutoCITEÔX3, the only integrated, handheld, Windows-based computer ticket writer that can communicate directly with parking meters to determine the status of every parking space as well as check on a vehicle’s history of tickets. The company’s new cell phone payment feature, mPARK, allows people to add time to computerized parking meters from any location by simply calling on their cell phone to an account previously set up for such charges. To help parking users even more, the meter itself can send a text message to a person’s cell phone to indicate that just a few minutes remain before the meter expires. The person can then simply respond to the message and add more time. Duncan Solutions, Inc., is the result of a merger of several companies already in the parking and enforcement business — Duncan Parking Technologies, a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of single-space parking meters, with a 60 percent share of the North American parking market; Citation Management, an industry leader in parking citation processing and delinquent payment collection services; Reino Parking Systems, a supplier of “intelligent” parking solutions including Pay-by-Space and Pay-and-Display parking meters; and Enforcement Technology, a provider of the AutoCITE handheld citation issuance computer with integrated parking and enforcement management solutions. The merger was arranged so the combined company could better serve municipalities, universities, airports, and parking authorities with a single source for parking and traffic management. “We are pleased that we could combine the many products and services of these top companies to provide consumers as well as administrators and municipalities with the latest, most efficient, and most convenient products and services available,” said James Haugsland, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Duncan Solutions. “It makes us the only single-source company in the parking and enforcement industry.” Duncan Solutions will be making its major corporate debut at the International Parking Institute’s conference and exposition May 15-18 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Debuting in Las Vegas is appropriate for Duncan Solutions because Las Vegas is one of the many success stories for which Duncan Solutions’ companies have been responsible. Las Vegas installed 17 of the new Pay-by-Space meters in a busy downtown area to test how they would work. “With the growth in population in the downtown area, we saw a huge increase in citation issuance,” said Doug Towner, Senior Parking Enforcement Officer for Las Vegas. “But issuing more tickets is not our goal. We’d rather bring in revenue through our meters than through ticket issuance. With the ability to pay by credit or debit card or a cell phone, Duncan meters make it easier for people to do the right thing. Our goal is to leave people feeling good about their dealings with the city.” Besides Las Vegas, recent product and service installations have also been initiated in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. Duncan Solutions is headquartered in Milwaukee and will continue to operate offices in Irvine, California; Harrison, Arkansas; and Oceanside, California. It has a staff of over 300 across multiple North American locations. More information on Duncan Solutions and its products and services can be obtained by calling 1-877-577-3632, emailing Email For Information, or going to the company’s Website at www.duncansolutions.com. Information on whether mPARK is available in a particular city may be found at www.mparkusa.com. |
