Issue date: 8/28/07 Section: Campus News

Bill Ayers has been cruising through UK parking lots as usual this year, making sure cars have permits and ticketing those that don't. But now he has a helper in the passenger seat to scan the masses.

The new Automated License Plate Recognition system, a high-tech tool that UK is the second campus nationwide to implement, notifies Ayers, a parking control supervisor assistant, every time he passes a car that has outstanding parking fines.

This new enforcement method will help free up parking spots for permit holders, said Don Thornton, director of Parking and Transportation Services

"The number one complaint from students every year is of other students who park in lots without permits," Thornton said, "thus preventing them from finding spots."

The system, manufactured by PIPS Technology in Knoxville, Tenn., uses two cameras mounted on the vehicle that capture a color image of each parked vehicle, as well as an infrared image of the license plate.

The license plate is then run against a database of vehicles with outstanding parking citations, notifying officers immediately with an alert sound on their laptop if a match is found.

PTS already owned the cameras and other equipment necessary for the system and only had to pay for the cost of installation, which Thornton estimated to be under $1,000.

The cameras had been in the UK Hospital parking structure, said PTS spokeswoman Chrissy Balding Tune, where they scanned passing license plates to detect student vehicles in the hospital parking.

After one a year, PTS decided to install the system into a campus patrol car. The new system combines the recognition technology with the database of UK parking violations.

"This technology is a great fit for us," Thornton said in an Aug. 22 news release. "It adds value to parking permits by allowing us to enforce parking regulations effectively and efficiently."

However, if a student backs into a spot, the only way for the officer to check the license plate is by manually entering the permit number, which Thornton said the officer would do, even though it would slow down the process of checking plates.

After the first system was installed on Aug. 8, Tune said PTS ran through a demonstration of the system. After a period of 40 minutes, the new system had scanned 2,500 license plates, five of which contained outstanding tickets.

Eventually, PTS would like to use the system for detecting stolen vehicles, as well as monitoring a vehicle's length of stay in a time-designated area, according to the news release.

If students are parked on campus and they have an unpaid citation, they risk impoundment, Tune said. If a student receives six or more parking tickets during one school year, the vehicle can be impounded each and every time it is in violation until the student pays the fines.

Tune said while PTS has a more efficient system to crack down on parking violators, it is not trying to increase punishment for students parking on campus.