AIBU re Office Car Park Wars

[NaughtyAmeliaJaneridesagain]

I work at an office with limited car parking. There are several branches of my organisation, many without car parks. The person allocating spaces to staff favours her friends. Additionally, higher management insist they must have a space every day. Parking locally can be difficult and is expensive. Staff constantly moan about current set up. Do you have a system of allocating spaces for staff whose work patterns range from 2 days pw to full time, including many term time workers, with circa 100 staff and 35 spaces, and about 10 managers? How do you deal with this issue at your workplace? Staff getting more and more irate, has been raised numerous times over years and nothing changes. I feel I need to present a solid plan or am gonna go nuts. Just heard council plans to develop nearby car park next year and things are going to get nasty. WWYD ? AIBU to try to get this changed? If so how ??! Previously managers said they would give up spaces if they ALL agreed to. Needless to say a manager refused to do so, so none did ! Practical suggestions welcomed 😀

Encourage car-sharing: set aside some spaces for car-sharers only, increase their desirability by having them closest to the office entrance and any other perks that might help.

Look to make agreements with owners of car-parks in the area.

Ours is done on distance. Anyone can apply for a permit but you have to provide your home address and there are different colours for the radius. People who live the furthest away can park as soon as the car park opens, people who live further can park after a certain time (I think it’s 9) and people who live within walking distance can only park after 10am which is fairly useless as it’s long full by then.

However 2+ overrides all the colours so if you live a two min walk away but can pick up a friend in the way you can get in whenever you like. People hate that. I have a colleague who lives within sight of the office but his wife also works with us so if it rains they can drive. Really pisses me off!

DHs office do it on seniority too.

At my previous place, senior management had spaces. A certain number were allocates visitors spaces. The rest were shared between staff of similar levels so managers John and Jane would share a space and it was up to them how they did it. Generally they all did week on week off but you could be more creative with part time people.

@category12 we have the 2+ spaces closer to the office but it just encourages people to drive who could easily walk!

You can't make it too complicated with changing rotas etc - people will never remember when it's their days etc.

Car-sharing spaces, management no longer having allocated spaces, work out discounts with council/privately owned car-parks, reward car-sharing, cycling and public transport use, and first come first served.

Senior management only get allocated parking. First come first served for the rest. People should be encouraged to take public transport where possible or cycle, walk, scoot etc. we don’t have a lot of spaces but we have excellent shower and changing facilities and secure storage for bikes. We also have free bikes provided by our organization to move between offices so you can park at a different location and take a bike to the other one

Car sharing ?
I worked somewhere it worked really well and you save money .

We used to have a seniority based plan balanced with need/blue badge. Then our building was inundated by colleagues from another office as the estate changed. They were all used to parking and had mainly worked very happily in the other building for a long time .They all immediately went to the top of the list so the whole thing had to be revised.
Now the whole car park except for blue badge spaces( which are very strictly monitored) has been divided up among the people in the building. Only the CEO has a space and even that isnt actually a space but blocks a delivery access so he has to move his car as and when necessary. Each space therefore has about 3 people allocated to it. These are a balance between full and part time and once allocated you are expected to come to an agreement between you.
It generally works and the plan is redrawn each year with everyone confirming they are still driving themselves and that any couples are treated as one person ( we seem to have quite a few couples/family members ).

We have similar issues but the numbers are much bigger c 1000 spaces for 3000 staff. We have various things. There is no public transport within walking distance.

Companies do a shuttle bus to and from the train station all day and they run free buses daily in the local area but this really just covers 9-5. They have priority parking for car sharers, they've done a deal with a local park and ride and they run a shuttle bus from there. They encourage all staff who can, to do at least one day a week working from home. They encourage condensed working which means people are in less days. Previous company kept a small number of spaces that weren't allowed to be parked in until 9.50am so that 10am start people had a chance at spaces. Another company allocated individual spaces to people and if you weren't in then you had to let security know and they'd reallocate space. Another gave so many spaces per team and let individual managers sort it out - most of them did a rota.

Staff want equal access, not based on distance from office. No £ to rent space nearby, nor valet parking sadly. Tetris parking won't work due to staff leaving for school runs and re layout of car park. Need some sort of computerized space allocator I guess, lottery style with tickets for no of days worked perhaps ??

You can't make it too complicated with changing rotas etc - people will never remember when it's their days etc.

Why not? It works fine for us.

But everyone here works shifts (retail) so there's no point doing it any other way, or you'll have parking spots sat empty for no reason.

Priority for anyone driving an electric car or car-sharing

Based on distance from public transport? Ie if you live far away from a train station you get a higher priority over someone who has one nearby.

Only works if your office has a stop nearby tho.

we have a fixed day per week, and car sharers are allowed in all the time - senior management should not have free parking, they already get more money, more bonus (higher %) bigger pensions, healthcare, more holiday...

Staff want equal access, not based on distance from office.

I think the distance thing is fairer tho - staff are obviously all going to want spaces, but surely need should come into it over want?

We allocate a certain number of spaces to each functional department and then the department head makes the rules for their team which means it's easier to take personal circumstances into account.

When I worked in City centre it was on seniority
No way would any of the senior people have ceded their space to junior staff
I had a space latterly
Now work in out of town location with ample parking

Depends on the office - my office I am deemed an essential car user and get contract parking under the office because I am contracted out of it. I am one of 2 people who get this. It is a taxable benefit as part of my pay package.If I am not using my space I let other use it.

If I visit another office I would just use a public space, with the free ones being given to people who had to bring their cars in and dash off to another meeting / visit. This is because I can claim expenses for visiting another office and they can't. Those spaces are allocated on a diary basis - if your diary is really full and you are going to struggle to walk to the public spaces / can't catch the train in time then you get a space. If you are just parking up all day you are encouraged to either work from home or catch public transport.

In reality I cycle and catch the train if I can.

In our office, we have split our spaces into equal amounts of users. The group work it out amongst themselves, but most groups go for a full week of having a space.

So in your instance, you have 25 spaces/100 drivers (excluding the management), so that's four drivers per space. Ascertain whether any P/T workers have "opposite" days, for instance Julie works Mon/Tues, and Jamie works Weds/Thurs/Fri. They would be considered as one driver, as would a couple. No dodgy double deals allowed!

Then it's up to the four drivers to decide what works best for them... if they are off, they can swap weeks, and even odd days, and only have to be in touch with the three other drivers in their group.

Establish if all 100 people actually want to be classed as drivers though... in our office a guy wanted to make sure he was entitled to a space just in case he may need it sometime in the future...., even though he didn't have a car, and hadn't driven for over 20 years! Some people eh?

All I can say is that this system does work, and is super easy to administer as it is basically the team's responsibility to organise themselves.

Good luck! This was a massive problem when we moved from unlimited spaces to a new office with a tiny carpark!

Allocated via a ‘lottery’every 6 months. You couldn’t get 2 consecutive 6 month stunts so if you had a space you couldn’t enter next time. If you car shared you got a guaranteed space also guaranteed for disabled or pregnant staff. One lady had just returned to work following a major op so she got a space for 6 months to ensure she recovered.

Allocate the spaces to teams based on the FTEs in the team. Then let the team manager their rota themselves.

We have an overseas office and they have a rota. You get a space for 'x' months and then you park on the street until
Your turn comes round again.

All of my workplaces have been first come first served. One did try an allocation system but it caused so many arguments and left so many spaces empty (e.g. Mike has a space on Tuesdays but he's out at client meetings and offering his space to others wasn't at the top of his priority list) that it reverted to FCFS. Favours people who get it early but they're more likely to live further away - getting in early to beat the traffic - so always seemed the fairest of a bad bunch of choices to me.

You have to incentivise people to make better choices: maybe Charge for the parking as a percentage of salary, which might stop those who are well paid but could walk a mile but choose to drive as easy; free parking for electric cars or car shares; maybe extra day annual leave for cyclists etc.

We suggested that everyone got a coloured sticker for their car and each day or week, a particular colour would have to use the Park and Ride, just to give people who start later a chance at getting on-site. They've never done that so effectively all the early starters get a space and the later starters end up in the Park and Ride every day. I'm an early starter but can't even just voluntarily go to the Park and ride as I start an hour before the shuttle buses start as those are co-ordinated to begin when the car park on site is usually full. the main problem with our work is that they have to sort it and offer ways to help staff as they just wouldn't have staff at all as there is no public transport available. i.e. nearest train station and bus stop are 3 miles away. and no street parking as it's off a motorway slip road.