During the summer, Parking and Transportation Services will finalize a transition to another vendor system for the parking pass system and parking portal website.
The transition is expected to happen by the end of June. Their current vendor, T2 Vendor System, will be switched with the AIMS Parking Management Software, which will change the layout of the parking portal website.
Parking and Transportation’s Executive Director Jim Spice and Associate Director Matthew Beckwith said all previous purchase data will be imported into the new parking management software and all single sign-ons will remain the same.
Beckwith said the user experience will change; the portal will be more interactive and include more information. Spice elaborated on this by sharing some of the information users can expect to see.
“Right now, you have to go on our parking website to see each permit type, where and what days those permits are valid — all of that information is not only going to be on our website, but in the portal so you know exactly what you’re buying,” Spice said.
Spice said the changes in vendor came because parking and transportation experienced a lack of customer satisfaction with the current one.
“We weren’t satisfied with the level of customer satisfaction,” Spice said. “We would have to create a ticket because people wouldn’t be able to understand how to fix the problem, and sometimes it’d be days or even months before they would get back with us.”
According to Spice, CU Boulder made the same transition from T2 to AIMS in 2022 due to the same issues with customer service responsiveness and has experienced positive improvements since their transition.
Student permits will still be available for purchase per semester at the same prices and can be paid for through either an automatic credit card charge or through a charge placed on their student account.
Permits that automatically renew every month until they get canceled will replace the faculty semester, academic year and annual permit options, and this will result in either an automatic credit card charge or paycheck deduction per month until the plan is canceled.
The AIMS software is packaged with Gentec, the backend software for their license plate recognition software, into one annual subscription fee, making AIMS the higher-priced software compared to T2 alone, but a better deal due to the annual subscription fees for Gentec and T2 currently being separate.
Parking and Transportation have a five-year contract with AIMS for $60,000 a year, which, like all services provided by the department, is paid for through the sales of parking permits, fines and visitor parking revenue.
The contracts they had with previous vendors cost $45,000 this past year, but Beckwith said those costs rose yearly and would have continued to rise and cost as much or more than AIMS.
Beckwith also mentioned there would sometimes be additional charges when projects happened under the old vendors, but with AIMS there will be no additional charges when the department needs to do a project or change something.
“This is a better product that provides better customer service, which will help us better serve the UCCS community and is unlikely to cost significantly more over time,” Beckwith wrote in a follow-up email.
Summer parking permits hosted by the T2 system will be available for purchase at 8 a.m. on May 14 and will be officially replaced by AIMS at the end of June.
Students with questions or concerns can email Parking and Transportation Services at [email protected] or call 719-255-3528.
A sign in front of Parking and Transportation Services. Photo by Meghan Germain.