Managing the Modern Curb
- Brooks McKinney, APR
- 5 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Passport Labs’ Adam Kriegel connects cities with curb-management software that helps reduce congestion, increase pedestrian safety.
Key Takeaways:
Curb management is about safety, not just parking. Adam Kriegel helps cities use the Passport Parking curb management software to keep bus lanes, bike lanes, crosswalks, and emergency access routes clear, improving pedestrian safety and reducing congestion.
Technology is transforming how cities manage the curb. Through Passport’s integrated platform, municipalities can connect parking payments, permits, and enforcement data in real time, giving them greater confidence in enforcing local regulations.
Success comes from solving problems and playing the long game. From mediating consumer disputes as a college intern to earning the parking industry's highest professional honor, Kriegel has built his career on perseverance, collaboration, and a passion for innovation.
Who among us has not parked our car illegally, “just for a minute,” while we run into a store to grab a coffee, pick-up our laundry, or handle some other type of “quick (in our mind)” transaction? So what if we’re blocking a bus-only lane or a loading zone, or violating “no parking or stopping at any time” signage. Who’s going to know or do anything about it?
Adam Kriegel, a certified parking, transportation and mobility professional (PTMP), that’s who. He’s also the vice president of partnerships and business development at Passport Labs, Inc., maker of Passport parking enforcement and compliance software.
“Parking is the one thing people have no problem stealing,” he observes. “Good people who would never leave a store without paying for something are happy to roll the dice on parking compliance. They tell themselves ‘they won’t catch me, or if they do, I’m willing to pay.’ Not following the rules matters to cities, and it needs to have consequences.”
Putting Safety First
Kriegel places his work at the intersection of curb rights and curb compliance.
“The core focus of our business is compliance in the curb lanes,” he notes. “We need to make sure people are not blocking bus-only lanes, pedestrian crosswalks, bike lanes, or fire hydrants, and that they’re observing daylighting rules designed to keep the ends of intersections clear so people have clear lines of sight.”
“Parking is the one thing people have no problem stealing."
-- Adam Kriegel, Passport Labs
For most cities, he adds, keeping the curb moving is primarily focused on increasing pedestrian safety and reducing congestion. If ambulances or other emergency vehicles cannot navigate city streets quickly, for example, the overall safety of a city and its citizens will be compromised.
Building a Foundation
Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Kriegel was an only child. His dad was the director of technology for Equitable Insurance, a financial advisory and brokerage firm. His mom was an insurance professional who ran operations for large teams of brokers and insurance agents.
“My parents were both very driven, hard-working professionals,” Kriegel recalls. “And they brought similar skills to their jobs day to day relating to people, listening to problems and trying to figure out solutions.”
Growing up in the mid-1980s, Kriegel was also one of the first kids he knew to have a personal computer at home. “I’ve always been strong in math, and driven to math and music, so being exposed to technology at home was a real bonus,” he reflects.
Sadly, his parents’ marriage was not as strong as their work ethics, leading them to split up when Kriegel was just two years old.
“Actually, I grew up with four parents (both of my parents remarried) who put me first,” he reveals. “They literally wrote the book on how to manage a divorce, how to prioritize a child, how to set me up for success. They agreed a long time ago to prioritize what was best for me, not what was best for themselves. My family structure was very strong. It made me who I am today.”
Learning to Solve Problems
After high school—Kriegel attended Commack High School on Long Island—the University of Albany, a New York public university, recruited him on an academic scholarship through its elite, merit-based Presidential Scholars Program.
“The best part of the program,” he emphasizes, “was that it exposed me to a group of human beings who were driven, had similar aspirations in life, and had similar values around family and friendship. I’ve been good friends with many of them now for more than three decades.”
At UAlbany, Kriegel also fell into “an unbelievable opportunity” to intern with the New York State Attorney General’s office during his junior and senior years.
“I worked with the AG’s office in the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Fraud mediating complaints from consumers against large retail organizations,” he explains. “It was a very rules-based job, where I had to come up with arrangements to make one party feel whole and the other party happy to put the case behind them. In some ways, that was my first real job, my first time putting on a shirt and tie, being in an office, and finding creative ways to drive conversation to solve problems.”
Kriegel graduated UAlbany in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing management.
Exploring Technology
After college, Kriegel followed in his parents’ footsteps (sort of). Initially, he owned and operated an Allstate Insurance agency. Three years later, however, he took a job in business development with Marathon Consulting, an IT consulting and digital marketing firm. A year and a half later, however, Marathon was acquired by Netsurit, a South African technology services company. For the next six years, Kriegel helped Netsurit clients implement IT infrastructure and network solutions.
Embracing Digital Payments
Along the way, however, he became aware of a new, evolving concept called digital payments. Kriegel's math- and technology-savvy brain could see the intersection of mobile payments, transportation and parking technology fast approaching.
“Once I started attending thought leadership events within this parking and transportation mobility space, I was hooked,” he offers. Kriegel also attracted the interest of PayByPhone, a mobile payments company that had just been acquired by Volkswagen. The company hired him in late 2017.
Expanding Consumer Choice
For the next four and a half years, Kriegel helped PayByPhone develop and promote a new multi-vendor parking concept: instead of requiring drivers to use a unique parking app in each different city, why not allow a multi-city parking app such as PayByPhone to be a second acceptable way to pay for parking, subject to approval by each city.
"We started going city to city, telling municipal leaders they needed to provide consumer choice to their parkers,” he explains. “They needed to have a redundant solution so if something was glitchy with one app, there would always be a way to park. Eventually, our idea really caught on, and now it’s pretty much the norm.”
Broadening the Vision
After several years in the mobile parking and payments space, however, Kriegel was itching to work in the broader, more robust curb-management space.
Passport stood out as a software platform that combined parking payments, enforcement, permitting and other mobility technologies in a single application,” he says. “It gave me the opportunity to help advance how cities and operators think about the curb—connecting curb rights to curb compliance—in a more integrated way.”
Kriegel joined Passport in September 2024 and has been there ever since.
Connecting Curb Rights and Compliance
Today, the Passport platform is used by more than 800 cities, universities and private operators across North America. It gathers real-time parking enforcement data from municipal sensors, cameras and license-plate readers, then compares it to a dynamic library of parking rights granted, i.e., payments made at physical pay stations or meters, payments made using the app, residential parking permits granted to local residents etc.
Depending on the urgency of the parking violation (say blocking a bus-only lane) and the parking regulations in effect in that location, traffic safety officers have the option to request that the driver move the car, issue a parking citation, or order an immediate tow.
“The real magic of our software is how cities using the platform can log in and see all the payments and permitting data we’re processing,” emphasizes Kriegel. “Seeing that real-time data gives them the confidence to enforce their own parking rules.”
Adapting to Local Needs
Parking rules and enforcement policies differ widely, of course, from city to city across the U.S. That’s why Passport designed its platform to be configurable by each municipality or parking operator to match local rules of engagement.
“Passport clients can configure our software to match parking policy, enforcement rules, permits and payment options that apply in every zone, lot, garage, district or curb segment in their city,” offers Kriegel. “It is highly configurable, but does not require any custom software development.”
Passport typically sets up integrations to connect its curb management platform to local parking enforcement systems, permit databases, license plate recognition systems and meter/pay stations, he adds. The software can also be integrated with a city’s payment collection systems.
Simplifying Parking
For drivers, Passport Parking is a downloadable app. Once a driver locates and inputs a location-specific zone number—typically found on nearby signs or decals on parking meters—the app downloads local parking rates, time limits and enforcement hours from a municipal database. The driver can then calculate how much it will cost to park.
The Passport Parking platform is used by cities and/or private operators in all 50 states and Canada, but it is not currently available in every U.S. city.
Finding Calm
Workdays begin early in the three-bedroom home in Westchester County, N.Y., about 10 miles north of Manhattan, that Kriegel shares with his wife. If it’s later than 5:30 a.m., the house is quiet, his wife, the principal for an elementary school in Queens, is already gone.
Kriegel starts his days with meditation and maybe a little reading.
“I like to find 15 minutes of calm each morning with no screen on, no phone in my lap, no e-mails to deal with,” he emphasizes.
And then he makes the 30-second commute down the hall to his home office. But not before toasting a slice of his wife’s homemade sourdough bread and enjoying it with coffee and either a hard-boiled egg or an avocado.
Earning Industry Recognition
At Passport, Kriegel manages a team of five engaged in marketing, business development and partnership creation. A member of the company’s nine-person leadership team, he also works closely with the company’s client success and sales team.
Kriegel spends 40 to 50 percent of his time these days on the road—“I do a lot of my work from the airport and the airplane,” he claims—visiting cities and clients throughout North America. You’re as likely to find him meeting with the manager of a large city’s municipal parking services department as the owner of a private parking lot in downtown Wherever, USA.
Kriegel’s travels recently took him to Milwaukee, Wis. where the International Parking & Mobility Institute (IPMI) honored him with the 2026 James M. Hunnicutt, CAPP, Industry Professional of the Year Award, the trade group’s highest individual accolade.
“I work in an industry with a lot of incredibly smart and hardworking people,” Kriegel reflects, “so I’m extremely honored to be recognized by IPMI for my work. I’m proud to be associated with my team at Passport, the parking and curb-management industry, and of course, IPMI. Having the opportunity to be on stage representing all three at the same time was truly mind-blowing.”
He also participates regularly in conferences hosted and sponsored by transportation groups such as CoMotion and the Open Mobility Foundation.
Balancing Work and Life
When Kriegel, a passionate New York Knicks fan, is not thinking about parking and curb-management, he enjoys playing golf and remodeling homes— his own and several rental properties he owns. In recent months, he has gutted and rebuilt one of his home bathrooms, and repainted his front porch.
“I'm far from a professional, but I do all the work around my house myself,” he emphasizes. “It saves me money and it’s great for my mental health.”
Playing the Long Game
But whether Kriegel is overseeing the work of his team, on the road managing customer needs, or at home tackling another remodeling project, one thing never changes: his commitment to doing great work and never giving up.
“The key to success for me and my teams is perseverance,” he advises. “I try to make sure we’re always playing the long game, always pushing ahead if we experience setbacks. To borrow a phrase from Jalen Brunson, the all-star point guard for the Knicks, ‘No matter what, we're going to keep fighting.’ I think that says it all.”
# # #