Challenges and opportunities in smart parking

A new report from ITS America, Smart Parking and the Connected Consumer, looks at the size of the parking industry and the smart parking opportunities for facility operators and municipalities. The parking industry, defined as parking facility management, billing and collection, enforcement, and other ancillary services, is a US$24-25 billion dollar industry. The commercial parking lots and garages industry includes about 3,000 companies with combined annual revenue of more than US$8 billion. The parking cu
Charging, Tolling & Road Pricing / December 13, 2012
A new report from 560 ITS America, Smart Parking and the Connected Consumer, looks at the size of the parking industry and the smart parking opportunities for facility operators and municipalities.

The parking industry, defined as parking facility management, billing and collection, enforcement, and other ancillary services, is a US$24-25 billion dollar industry. The commercial parking lots and garages industry includes about 3,000 companies with combined annual revenue of more than US$8 billion.

The parking customer tends to want to begin and end their trip without uncertainty about the details, such as parking availability and payment.  Smart parking providers seek to integrate navigation, essentially pre-trip planning, with other elements such as parking price, guidance-to-spot, transit and airport connections, and other amenities.

Key challenges for smart parking providers is growing in scale in terms of numbers of operators, cities, regions, customer accounts, and service scope (growing in number of services, such as bundling merchant items with tickets, dinner reservations, shopping etc.) in order to attract users first, then to demonstrate impact of their services on operators’ occupancy rates and revenue over time.

This report summarises key factors in parking operators’ decisions to deploy new technologies. Key factors are parking supply and demand, and in particular factors influencing occupancy rates, such as parking needs, customer service models, and operator return on investment. The key smart parking management systems are Permit and Enforcement (P&E), Parking Access and Revenue Control (PARC), and Parking Usage Recognition and Customer Service (PURCS) Systems.

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