CHALLENGE:
A rising incident of traveler’s rage, mounting complaints, illegal parking, lost revenue and high emissions from cars looking for parking spaces had one international airport searching for a better way to route cars to available parking spaces.
The airport parking terminal is expansive, accommodating over 9,000 vehicles on eight levels. The airport sees an average of 75,000 passengers on a weekend day, and in excess of 105,000 passengers on the busiest holidays. The parking garage is frequently at near capacity. Travelers would drive into the airport’s parking garage hoping to quickly locate an empty space. Without a system in place, drivers were forced to travel from level to level and up and down long rows of parked cars, hoping to find an open space or another car leaving a space. Sometimes, in frustration or due to time constraints, they would resort to parking illegally in no-parking zones or on the shoulder of traffic lanes. In addition to customer satisfaction issues, drivers cruising up and down isle after isle looking for a parking space were creating excess emissions.
The airport had to find a car park system that would quickly direct travelers to the empty parking spaces and be within their budget constraints. They evaluated several systems already installed at several other airports as a means of comparison.
- Ultrasonic Sensor Design - Where each parking space was equipped with an ultrasonic detector to monitor if the space is occupied. The installed cost was approximately $1,100 per space ... outside the available budget.
- Buried Copper design – This system, which was also outside the targeted budget, relied on copper wires embedded in the floor to sense and count cars as they enter and leave. Cutting into pre-stressed concrete can be a very expensive and dangerous undertaking and would impact current operations.
SOLUTION:
After extensive research to determine the optimal approach to the problem, they decided on the use of a vision based, video analytic vehicle counting system to count cars in their airport parking garage. The resulting solution by
PureTech Systems consists of four components: video cameras,
PureActiv vehicle counting video analytics, aggregating / signage server and the physical signs to display the lot information to the drivers.
SYSTEM CHALLENGES:
The installation was not without its challenges. The system had to be configured to take into account many variables such as lighting, weather conditions, headlights, speed of cars passing, color of cars, cars driving in the wrong lanes, and high profile vehicles. The low ceiling height of 7.5 ft and close proximity of the cameras to the vehicles created additional challenges for the software engineers.
Now fully operational, the new system uses 108 cameras throughout the garage. PureActiv software analyzes the video feeds, detects moving cars, and keeps track of how many cars are parked in each section. Signs at entrances of each level tell drivers which direction to proceed and how many spaces are available in each section.
RESULTS
- Accuracy - Reported count accuracy at greater than 98.7 percent on a daily basis.
- Customer Satisfaction - Travelers are now finding their way to available parking spaces with ease. The number of daily customer complaints has been reduced from 20 to 50 to nearly zero.
- Budget - The final cost was under the $3.5 million budget (Less than $400 per space)
- Reduced Emissions – Vehicle Emissions have been substantially reduced.