Today, more than a billion cars are on the road, and this figure is expected to double within the next couple decades. Often ignored is the fact that much traffic comes from drivers cruising for a vacant or cheaper parking spot — recent studies indicate drivers hunting for parking account for roughly 50 percent of traffic. Traffic congestion leads to driver frustration, which may increase the number of accidents and excessive carbon emission, which impacts air quality and raises environmental issues. Smarter parking facilities and measures ensure the security of parking facilities and quality of life for local residents, as well as relieve environmental stress related to automobiles.
Today, more than a billion cars are on the road, and this figure is expected to double within the next couple decades. Often ignored is the fact that much traffic comes from drivers cruising for a vacant or cheaper parking spot — recent studies indicate drivers hunting for parking account for roughly 50 percent of traffic. Traffic congestion leads to driver frustration, which may increase the number of accidents and excessive carbon emission, which impacts air quality and raises environmental issues. Smarter parking facilities and measures ensure the security of parking facilities and quality of life for local residents, as well as relieve environmental stress related to automobiles.
There are several points in a parking scenario where modernsecurity and automation equipment can help. People are getting more concerned about environmental issues, and the ever-increasing fierce competition is forcing parking lot operators to take a closer look at a variety of methods that enable cost savings and increase customer satisfaction, said Dirk Fox, Product Management for Car Access, Skidata.
When an end user is planning a new project where parking represents a large portion of the project, such as a stadium, it is important to plan the parking facility before construction, said Chris Yigit, AutoVu Senior Product Manager, Genetec. “ALPR is a viable option when deciding how to manage parking. For example, just recently a new entertainment facility was planned, and the choice for parking was to implement a concept called pay-by-plate. The details of the technology were left to the parking operator to decide and propose. However, the concept had to be agreed upon upfront as this had a direct impact on revenue, manpower and flexibility which varies greatly from facility to facility. The specific requirements of a shopping center, stadium and airport are all very different.”
RESERVED
Parking spaces can often be as scarce as seats in a popular restaurant, especially in urban areas. “Reservation can help the driver avoid driving around aimlessly,” Fox said. Smart parking systems can facilitate reservations of parking spots, but this can require an additional effort of real-time space enforceability within the lot, said Elliot Martin, Postdoctoral Research Engineer, Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “That generally increases costs and today still requires on-site manpower. However, in environments where reserving a spot demands a premium, such costs could be retrieved with the additional revenue earned from reservations.”
The ability to reserve a parking space can be enabled through space counting, single-space recognition and connecting to online services. “The information collected by the smart parking facility can broadcast availability within and outside the lot. When delivered to travelers, it enables more efficient trip planning and can increase revenue for parking operators through better capacity management of the lot. While permitting reservations can also increase management costs, in appropriate markets, reservations can earn revenue that ultimately exceed those costs,” Martin said. With exact counting and single-space recognition in combination with a guiding system, a car driver can be directly sent to the correct parking area, Fox added.