GUIDANCE
An area in which technology could increase efficiency is by assisting visitors in locating vacant parking spaces. This would be especially useful in larger, more crowded parking facilities in which searching for parking is time- and energy-consuming, Martin said. “Technology such as changeable message signs could tell visitors at which level there exists available parking. The challenge with this, however, is that accurately determining whether specific spots are available is still difficult for prevailing sensor technologies. It requires either an accurate and clever algorithm based on strategically located vehicle counts, or spot-specific sensors, which are more expensive. Camera technology could also support this function, but it can also be expensive, and requires sophisticated image-processing algorithms that still offer less than 100-percent accuracy.”
PAYMENT
Faster payment would be automated with RFID technology, similar to that used for FasTrak in the Bay Area or EZPass on the East Coast, Martin said. “Payment-wise, this would remove the need for a gate at the entrance and exit, but only if it can be universally applicable to all cars.”
A more feasible modification would be to use an item that most people already have, such as credit and debit cards, Martin continued. “Some banks are beginning to embed RFID chips into credit cards, and a terminal can pull information off of the card when the card is waved close. This technology, if more widely applied, could speed up the payment process at the gate, and does not require universal adoption to work. Consumers would just have to wave the card as opposed to swiping it.”
Consideration can also be given to eliminating paper tickets and their associated hardware, using only the license plate as the means of record, said Jim Kennedy, President of Inex/ Zamir. With pay-by-plate, there are no stalls to paint and maintain, and simple enforcement is possible, Yigit added. “Pay-by-plate is a concept that seems to be catching on these days. Basically, the patron is identified by his plate; the advantages are that the plate is unique and is fixed to the car. The concept is simple, but the ramifications and benefits are huge.”
The idea of a fully-automated ticketing system can be daunting to many. “Many in the parking industry have expressed concerns over a ticketless payment system as they do not fully understand the capabilities of ALPR. They worry about such things as misreading a license plate and even duplicate license plates within the facility,” Kennedy said. “While it is possible to misread a license plate — anyone in the ALPR field will readily admit that — the difficulty it might cause is minimal to nonexistent. What has to be remembered, particularly in parking, is that you have a finite number of license plates to which the one sitting at the exit could correctly be linked; it did, after all, enter the facility at some point, so it does exist in the database in the facility.”
However, there are also psychological issues to consider. “A ticketless system could be argued to be better, but industry people have told me that drivers are more comfortable when they get something in return for their car, even if it is just a ticket. It is sort of like a receipt for their vehicle and gives them some recourse to prove they indeed have a car in the facility,” Kennedy said.
With a ticket, you have yet another number to reference and virtually zero opportunities to make an error, Kennedy said. Adding license plate numbers to tickets can also prevent car theft, Fox added.
If the number is captured and read just after the ticket is issued, the license plate number is tied to the ticket number on a server, and that means a unique identifier and transaction number are tied together on that server, Kennedy said. “The benefit of having the license plate number captured prior to the ticket being dispensed and thereby allowing the number to be printed or encoded on the ticket itself, is the ability to see if the ticket presented at exit belongs with that particular vehicle even in the event of communications failure with the central server. Swapped tickets are caught out at this point, and lost tickets can have a fair and accurate tabulation of charges made, as it is known when that vehicle (license plate) actually entered the facility.”