Same layer. Tuned to the pressure you’re actually under.
One decision layer, tuned to what each operation is measured on: a campus permit policy, a hospital’s access, an airport’s pledged revenue, a mixed-use lease.
Stratum runs the whole analytics lifecycle on your live numbers (describe, predict, prescribe) and re-runs it every time the decision comes back. A one-time study runs it once; Stratum runs it continuously.
On campus, a parking decision is usually a policy decision.
The hardest calls aren’t really about the lots; they’re tangled up in permit policy, the debt on the garages, enrollment, and who’s entitled to what. And they come due on a schedule: every permit-rate cycle, every debt-coverage test, every back-to-school. Get one wrong and it surfaces as a fee-increase fight you can’t win, a coverage margin that runs too thin, or a lot full of appeals and a goodwill bill you pay for years. That’s the ground Stratum reads, and where a recommendation earns its defensibility. Four pressures we see on nearly every campus:
1.8 permits sold per space
Peer urban median (U. of Houston Parking). Reserved faculty bays, assigned by rank and seniority, sit empty beside full student lots (UT Knoxville). Course-registration data predicts lot-level demand a flat permit ignores (U. of Louisville).
1.20x coverage covenant
Parking fees set to retire garage debt and meet coverage covenants (UC systemwide parking policy). Rate covenants on parking revenue bonds commonly require at least 1.20x debt-service coverage.
An event is three decisions before it’s a traffic plan.
A campus runs hundreds of events a year, and each one is a decision before it’s a logistics job: who’s displaced, where they land, and how the core permit base is protected. The load isn’t any single event; it’s getting hundreds of allocation calls right, consistently, every term.
An event doesn’t just fill a lot; it evicts the permit holders who park there. Where do they land, and what does that do to the lots you’ve promised them?
Whether to approve this event’s parking (here, now, at this capacity) against the academic demand already spoken for.
The real-time flow, which comes out right only when the first two calls were made well.
350+ events a year
at one public university’s parking office; each one a displacement-and-allocation decision, not a one-off.
Source: University of Arizona Parking & Transportation Services.
Patient access, staff operations, and visitor demand
A hospital’s parking demand never lets up; it runs on four clocks at once. Staff rotate around the clock, inpatient visitors stay for days, outpatients cycle through exam rooms, and the emergency department fills with people who have to park now. These aren’t peaks you plan for once; they’re standing commitments you balance every hour of every day. So when you weigh a change (a closure, a rate, a reallocation), the constraint isn’t the count, it’s the access you’ve promised all four at the same time.
4 demand streams, one supply
Up to one space per day-shift employee, one per inpatient bed, three per exam room, and one per four daily ED visits. Source: SpaceMed healthcare parking guidance.
Travel demand, parking products, and operational service levels
At an airport, parking isn’t a line item; it’s a revenue pillar you protect every period. Demand shifts constantly across economy, garage, valet, and curb as travelers trade modes, and rideshare keeps pulling share, which is the pressure, because the revenue those products generate is often pledged against the terminal’s bonds. Fall short of the pledged number and it isn’t a soft quarter; it’s a coverage conversation with your finance office. So the standing question isn’t what to charge on a given day; it’s how to keep demand and revenue balanced across every product, continuously, so the commitment to bondholders holds.
43% of non-aero revenue
At North American airports, parking is ~43% of non-aeronautical revenue, often pledged against the terminal’s bonds. Source: Airports Council International.
Shared parking, competing priorities, and changing demand.
In mixed-use, the parking is governed by the leases, and leases don’t end when the project opens. Retail validations, residential guarantees, office allotments, and event surges are each written into agreements that run with the land, binding every current and future tenant. Meanwhile the demand never sits still: office fills the deck at midday, retail and residents at night. You’re continuously balancing allocations you’re contractually bound to against demand that shifts by the hour, and a change that eases one tenant can breach another’s guarantee.
2,287 by day, 1,200 by night
In one ULI shared-parking analysis, weekday-midday demand peaked at 2,287 spaces but fell to ~1,200 evenings and weekends; allocations that run with the land. Source: Urban Land Institute.
Public access, community priorities, and operational performance.
Curb, meter, structure, and permit revenue fund services well beyond parking, inside procurement rules and public accountability that move deliberately. Stratum applies the same decision layer to municipal parking; it’s simply not our lead focus today.
Every parking environment is different. Your decision framework should be too.
Tell us about your organization, the systems you already use, and the decisions your team is trying to make. We’ll show you how Stratum helps organizations evaluate those decisions using their own data, objectives, and operational context.