Mike Franklin: RDU’s petty parking excuses

I read your Dec. 24 news article “RDU pledges no more delays at parking exit” and quite frankly am unimpressed and lack confidence in its response.

I had a similar experience at the parking exit prior to the Nov. 10 event where I paid at the kiosk only to find the readers at the exit gates not working and cars backed up trying to leave. When I finally arrived at an attended station, I asked the attendant, since most people have paid at the kiosk, why don’t they just open the gates? Her response was “the system will not let us.”

Now to hear that RDU will rely instead on “somebody will hit the ‘kill switch’ ” – really? That does not give me confidence that the plan will work.

Additionally, the fact that RDU refuses to open the gates because of a potential loss of $5,000 out of its annual parking revenue of $44 million, or 0.011 percent of its parking revenue, shows how out of touch it is. To put it in perspective, for someone with an annual salary of $78,000 it would represent $9. Ridiculous.

This story was originally published December 29, 2015 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Mike Franklin: RDU’s petty parking excuses."