Finding cars parked incorrectly in parking spaces is a common problem in Spain, both in public and private car parks, as well as on the roads. Vehicles also double park for too long or park in spaces where they are not authorised to do so because they are reserved for specific groups or are for loading and unloading. Therefore, it is necessary to provide solutions to ensure compliance with street parking regulations.
Whatever the drivers’ situation and wishes, Spain has regulations for parking vehicles, which must be complied with. We are referring to the places where you can park and the correct way to do it, that is, without blocking vehicle movement or pedestrian traffic on the pavements.
The General Traffic Regulations of the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT) mention, to be exact, the term parking, which occurs when vehicles are immobilised voluntarily for more than two minutes, while a stop lasts less than two minutes, with the driver inside the vehicle.
Without explaining the correct way to park and how to indicate the manoeuvre, at Urbiotica we do want to address the important issue of enforcing parking regulations on public roads. What technological and digital solutions are there to ensure compliance with urban mobility regulations?
Technologies for ensuring compliance with street parking regulations
In Spain there are various types of places where parking is allowed: in the street, in public car parks or regulated parking areas. For each one of them, there are different technologies to ensure compliance with parking regulations; some are managed by the public administration and others by concessionary or private companies.
As a company specialised in Smart Parking and smart urban mobility solutions, we want to explain the solutions that can be used to ensure correct parking and the proper use of parking spaces in cities. These are applications that complement the systems detecting free parking spaces and also car park guidance systems.
In fact, the surveillance uses various technologies, including sensors or cameras that detect the vehicles entering and leaving the spaces. They are highly effective in detecting vehicles not authorised to occupy a parking space; they launch digital notices and alerts when a driver parks without being authorised to do so or overstays their time without paying for its use.
We also mention a very important point: parking space surveillance must always be based on respect for data protection and driver privacy.
Urban parking guidance
Control of parking on public roads
The largest number of parking operations occur in the spaces available on public roads at the kerb; in fact, a real problem is that there is very little space to park in the cities, to which we must add the fraudulent use of reserved parking spaces.
It is in this field of parking in the streets where violations occur, such as leaving the car double parked without the driver inside for more than two minutes, not paying for parking in a regulated space or overstaying the time allowed in such spaces.
How to efficiently maintain control of parking spaces on public roads? There are several ways, such as implementing parking control systems to ensure compliance with parking regulations. These solutions reduce fraud and control the correct use of parking spaces for loading and unloading and other cases that we will mention later.
Control of regulated parking
Secondly, we want to talk about the control of regulated parking through mobile applications and web platforms. Regulated parking areas such as the Regulated Parking Service (SER) in Madrid are forms of management, regulation and control in certain areas of the streets. These allow councils and other companies to rationalise and make the use of public space and vehicle parking compatible.
This method is therefore intended to organise mobility in cities in a rational way using, for example, parking meters offering a personalised vehicle registration service, and distinguishing these spaces with a specific colour, maybe blue lines, at certain times of day.
The digitisation of regulated parking control is an effective solution along this line. There are currently solutions that include functions and alerts to inform surveillance personnel when parking spaces are used fraudulently or incorrectly, passing from a control model based on predefined routes to another by zones and based on alerts. Particularly innovative is the management of pay by space, which reports where each user parks and produces alerts per space when the regulations are breached.
We also highlight limited-time parking space control systems, which are very useful for towns with fewer than 500 spaces. In these cases, these solutions favour urban mobility when it makes no sense to have paid parking spaces as the cost of running them exceeds the income obtained from their use.
Control of reserved places
Some spaces are reserved for specific groups, as is the case with parking spaces reserved for people with reduced mobility (PRM) or those set aside for loading and unloading for transport or goods companies. How can the correct use of such spaces be guaranteed? With solutions that include the installation of sensors and communication networks with notices and alerts when fraudulent or unauthorised uses occur.
Occupancy detection sensors are anonymous, they do not store personal information on drivers or vehicles and only detect whether there are cars parked without PMR cards or not of companies authorised to unload and unload merchandise. What happens when an unauthorised driver uses a reserved parking space? An alert is sent to the parking surveillance service, enabling violations to be known instantly and reliably.
With smart platforms that manage data and information in real-time, these technological innovations reduce parking violations and end up being a powerful deterrent for unauthorised users.
The future of the enforcement of street parking regulations
What has been explained in this article is a sign that when civility and respect for drivers are lacking, there are technological tools that enable to rules to be enforced. In this specific case, those relative to parking in the streets to ensure proper management of car parks and improve urban mobility.
At Urbiotica, we have developed different applications and solutions aimed at this problem and specifically at controlling regulated parking spaces. The aim of Parkctrl is to help car park managers maintain a good rational order and partly as a deterrent, to ensure that the rules are observed and proper coexistence is encouraged from drivers of all types of vehicles.
Thus, technology and the latest solutions based on advanced communications, the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor or camera detection are essential to ensure compliance with parking regulations on the street.
