Finding a parking space when driving in a city is one of the biggest headaches for all drivers. The lack of parking spaces for all vehicles means that on more than one occasion the Regulated Parking Zones are misused. For this reason, among other cases of regulated parking, it is necessary to think about how to carry out an efficient control of paid regulated parking in cities.
Traffic management and urban mobility are very complex issues for municipalities and public administrations. It is difficult to please everyone because the volume of vehicles circulating in cities is very high and there are not enough parking spaces for everyone. And these decrease when there are parking spaces reserved for users who pay a fee for parking.
One way to solve this issue is the use of advanced digital technologies and solutions to ensure that paid parking spaces are only used by drivers who have paid to do so. Digitizing the system is the efficient way to control the proper use of these plazas. Otherwise, the operational cost of surveillance is very high because it requires a lot of personnel, which is practically never profitable for the municipality.
Therefore, in Urbiotica we want to talk about the current problems and solutions for the efficient control of regulated paid parking. In the second part of the article, we will talk about integrated technological solutions to solve these problems.
What are paid vacancies and the problems of their management?
Regulated parking services consist of parking lots that have a fee for a specific period of time, regulated by a parking meter, where the driver has to pay a fee. Within this type of parking there are several forms of management or control:
- Pay & Display: this is the traditional method in which payment is made and a paper is left on the vehicle’s windshield. Its management is inefficient because the surveillance service has to manually check car by car whether or not the vehicle has the payment ticket, so there is the possibility of human error.
- Pay by Plate: the driver must enter the license plate of his vehicle at the time of payment, so that the verification by the guards is more efficient because the license plate is read and the payment is verified. However, this method still requires control management by fixed routes and not by zones. In the case of Scan&Car (car that reads license plates), it implies having a surveillance vehicle circulating around the city, with the high operational and maintenance costs that this implies. In addition to increasing the number of vehicles in circulation instead of reducing traffic congestion, this method does not generate real time alerts and requires the presence of an officer who, after the alert, issues a fine.
- PaybySpace (pay per seat): this third method of managing pay per seat can also be pay per seat + tuition if the user pays the fee through an app. So this is a management system that allows to have a price control and real-time alerts. This system facilitates the detection of the presence of vehicles to know at all times when the arrivals and departures of the parking spaces occur and alerts can be generated in case of two types of problems: the parking of vehicles without paying or parking longer than allowed.
What problems exist in the management of these regulated and paid parking spaces? Basically, we can talk about two types of problems, which are the ones we have just mentioned in the PaybySpace management method.
Drivers who do not pay for paid parking spaces
The first case is that of drivers who do not pay the fee for parking their vehicles in paid parking spaces. This is a reality that causes different problems, not only of economic damage to the Administration responsible for the management of the regulated parking zones as it no longer obtains income for this service.
Likewise, parking without paying for this type of space creates problems in the mobility of cities, since the improper use of regulated parking spaces forces drivers to occupy others in turn. This results in a kind of domino effect.
Traffic in cities stops flowing when drivers cannot find parking spaces due to the previous point. So environmental and noise pollution increases due to the longer traffic time, to which can be added the increase in stress when too much time is spent looking for a parking space.
Vehicles exceeding the allowed parking time
The second problem in the effective control of paid parking spaces occurs with vehicles that do pay to park, but exceed the time allowed and keep it for hours, breaking the regulations and not allowing the fluid and optimal rotation of vehicles that should be in the strategies of traffic management and mobility in cities.
Pay-by-Space
Solutions for managing paid parking spaces
Given the two most important issues affecting the efficient, productive and legal management of pay-per-park in cities, what solutions are needed to solve them and to have an effective control for the benefit of all drivers and users who pay for parking?
From Urbiotica we would like to recommend several solutions with advanced technology tools and products that greatly facilitate the task of managing paid parking spaces.
Parking sensors parking space to parking space
Parking space-to-space sensors such as U-Spot sensors allow entities that manage paid parking in cities to manage them efficiently and in real time. The use of these devices in a control solution for outdoor paid parking spaces has the advantage of drastically reducing parking fraud, increasing vehicle turnover and improving urban mobility by increasing the availability of parking spaces.
These flush-mounted sensors do not take any data from the vehicles, but rather detect their presence so that parking lot managers know through an advanced communications system how many parking spaces are properly occupied at any given time and which ones are not complying with regulations.
Alert systems for security guards
In addition to these devices, the control of pay-per-park in cities is much more efficient if vigilante alert systems such as ParkCtrl are used. How does it works? It is a mobile application and web platform with which the user declares the use of a parking space, in addition to providing drivers with information on the authorized time remaining for the use of parking spaces.
The communication networks of this app and platform allow surveillance services to receive instant alerts when a driver parks in these paid parking spaces without having paid the fee, i.e. when the parking space is occupied improperly. And it also warns when a driver keeps the vehicle parked longer than allowed.
Advantages of the use of technology to control payment per seat
Technology is making great strides in recent years, with exponential leaps in the advantages it offers in all kinds of areas and sectors. In terms of the efficient control of paid parking spaces, the technologies we have discussed linked to a “pay-per-space” management model offer a number of benefits for public administrations, surveillance services and drivers.
- Firstly, it optimizes control costs by requiring fewer resources due to the real-time alert system, which is possible because the data is managed on the platform efficiently and with the maximum reliability provided by the vehicle detection sensors. In other words, it moves from a fixed route management model to a zone management model.
- Third, urban mobility is more fluid because vehicles park for the time allowed based on the time they pay to use this service, with an appropriate rotation.
- Fourth, it is also worth mentioning that there are parking guidance systems with which drivers take much less time to find a free parking space and as there are alert systems, only authorized vehicles are stopped.
- And, fifthly, local commerce is promoted because it facilitates people’s access in an orderly manner, to the economic benefit of local businesses.
Therefore, technological solutions based on NB-IoT or LoRaWAN communication networks, Big Data or the most reliable vehicle detection sensors and artificial vision (cameras) are deterrent techniques that prevent drivers from parking in these paid parking spaces without paying the fees or exceeding the allowed time. If they do so, enforcement services are immediately notified and can act quickly.
The problems currently faced by pay-per-parking space services in cities are there, and cannot be ignored. But there are also advanced applications and technologies, efficient and respectful of the data protection of vehicles and drivers that allow efficient control and management, optimizing costs and improving the quality of services, due to the ease of access.
