Bidding For Parking: The Impact of University Affiliation on Predicting Bid Values in Dutch Auctions of On-Campus Parking Permits

Parking is often underpriced and expanding its capacity is expensive; universities need a better way of reducing congestion outside of building costly parking garages. Demand based pricing mechanisms, such as auctions, offer a possible solution to the problem by promising to reduce parking at peak times. However, faculty, students, and staff at universities have systematically different parking needs, leading to different parking valuations. In this study, I determine the impact university affiliation has on predicting bid values cast in three Dutch Auctions of on-campus parking permits sold at Chapman University in Fall 2010. Using clustering techniques crosschecked with university demographic information to detect affiliation groups, I ran a log-linear regression, finding that university affiliation had a larger effect on bid amount than on lot location and fraction of auction duration. Generally, faculty were predicted to have higher bids whereas students were predicted to have lower bids.

When the library is located in prime real estate: a case study on the loss of space from the Duke University Medical Center Library and Archives.

The Duke University Medical Center Library and Archives is located in the heart of the Duke Medicine campus, surrounded by Duke Hospital, ambulatory clinics, and numerous research facilities. Its location is considered prime real estate, given its adjacency to patient care, research, and educational activities. In 2005, the Duke University Library Space Planning Committee had recommended creating a learning center in the library that would support a variety of educational activities. However, the health system needed to convert the library's top floor into office space to make way for expansion of the hospital and cancer center. The library had only five months to plan the storage and consolidation of its journal and book collections, while working with the facilities design office and architect on the replacement of key user spaces on the top floor. Library staff worked together to develop plans for storing, weeding, and consolidating the collections and provided input into renovation plans for users spaces on its mezzanine level. The library lost 15,238 square feet (29%) of its net assignable square footage and a total of 16,897 (30%) gross square feet. This included 50% of the total space allotted to collections and over 15% of user spaces. The top-floor space now houses offices for Duke Medicine oncology faculty and staff. By storing a large portion of its collection off-site, the library was able to remove more stacks on the remaining stack level and convert them to user spaces, a long-term goal for the library. Additional space on the mezzanine level had to be converted to replace lost study and conference room spaces. While this project did not match the recommended space plans for the library, it underscored the need for the library to think creatively about the future of its facility and to work toward a more cohesive master plan.