Story by Ciara Benham, Contributing writer 

Lately, as students walk through campus parking lots, they may feel like they’re following the “yellow slip road.”

When it comes to parking, the implementation of the new parking system has brought confusion on campus as students and faculty discover yellow parking slips on their vehicles.

The new system, called the License Plate Recognition system or LPR, utilizes cameras on designated vehicles to scan license plates. There are currently two authorized Murray State vehicles that use the system to make multiple daily trips around each campus lot.

Francie Ray, Parking Services parking manager, explained how the new system works to collect data from each license plate.

“The cameras scan the license plates on the vehicles,” Ray said. “This is a technology that uses optical character recognition to automatically read the license plate. The camera software is able to identify the pixel patterns that make up a license plate and translate the letters and numbers on the plate to a digital format. This digital format data is then sent to our database where it is compared to the plate numbers of the vehicles properly registered in our system.”

Ray said the new system is comparable in cost to the old system and offers benefits for the University.

“The new system eliminated the expense of hang tags with the use of license plates as our virtual tag, and the e-citation eliminated the cost of citation paper,” Ray said.

Another question that has been raised on campus is the difference between electronic and physical tickets.

“All citations are e-citations,” Ray said. “If there are written tickets, we have used complementary and notification slips to alert individuals regarding the non-registration of vehicles.”

These “notification slips” have caused confusion for some students on campus.

Rebecca Hickman, junior from Paris, Tennessee, spoke about her experience with the yellow parking slips and the new parking system.  

“I was upset when I first learned of the new parking system rules, and especially the new fee…I don’t have a lot of extra money, and $200 is a lot for a parking pass,” Hickman said. “Once I had accepted that I was going to have to follow these new rules, I went online to register my car. I sometimes have to drive one of my parents’ vehicles … So, I went ahead and registered all of them just in case I had to drive them up to class one day.”

Hickman was having trouble with her computer when she was registering her vehicles online. However, she called the Parking Office to confirm that all three vehicles were registered in the system, and they assured her that all of the vehicles were registered. The week of Oct. 15, Hickman drove her dad’s truck, one of the three vehicles she had registered, to class.

“This was not the first time that I have driven the truck to class, and I always park in the same lot,” she said. “However, when I got out of class…there was a yellow parking slip on the windshield for a ‘non-registered’ vehicle. I was immediately upset. I know how expensive these citations are, and I knew that I had registered the vehicle.”

After receiving the slip, Hickman checked her MyGate account before she called the Parking Office and saw that only her car was registered.   

“I was extremely upset because I had called and was reassured months ago that all three vehicles were registered,” Hickman said. “The next morning, I called to see about getting this resolved, and I was told that a manager would give me a call back. I had not heard anything, so that afternoon, I called again, and was told the same thing- a manager would call me back. Just a few minutes later this time, a manager did call me back, told me that they looked my account up in their old system, and all three vehicles were indeed registered. They apologized, removed the citation, and added the vehicles to my account in their new system.”

The new parking system is here to stay and while potential flaws are being worked on: be on the lookout for a yellow parking slip on your windshield.