What is smart parking?
As a central element of smart city initiatives, smart parking is designed to:
- Identify open parking spaces on the street and in garages and convey that information to drivers in maps and apps that can help them find parking quickly and easily.
- Accept mobile and digital payment from drivers for parking spaces.
- Support parking enforcement activity by alerting officials to parking violations.
- Provide data and analytics that cities can used to better plan for parking capacity and infrastructure.
Smart parking technology has been widely adopted as more urban areas turn to smart city technology to improve the efficiency of city services. But what is smart parking exactly, and what benefits does it offer drivers and municipalities? This brief primer on “What is smart parking?” provides an overview of the technology and explores how it can help to reduce parking frustration and improve driving conditions in cities throughout the U.S.
What is smart parking?
Smart parking technology is part of the smart cities trend which relies on data collected from a wide variety of sensors to improve management of city services, resources and assets to enhance quality of life for citizens. Smart parking technology addresses one of the biggest frustrations for citizens – finding available parking spots – while also making it easier to pay for parking and to simplify parking enforcement. Smart parking initiatives are often combined with smart street technology like smart traffic lights and smart street lights that improve safety, reduce commute times and alleviate traffic congestion.
What is smart parking designed to do?
Smart parking uses a variety of technologies to track the availability of open parking spaces and communicate that information to drivers through maps and apps on Internet-connected devices. Smart parking also often includes technology that allows drivers to pay for parking spaces with their mobile phone.
What is smart parking enforcement?
Smart parking systems can make parking enforcement easier by automatically alerting officials of parking violations or imminent violations, allowing enforcement personnel to be more efficient and enabling cities to increase revenue from ticket violations.
What is smart parking payment?
Smart parking payment technology is the ability to process mobile and/or digital payment for parking sessions, making it more convenient for drivers to pay for metered parking and simplifying payment collection for the city. Smart parking systems also allow for dynamic pricing, where the cost of metered parking may increase or decrease based on location and time of day.
What is smart parking’s greatest benefit for drivers?
For drivers, smart parking eliminates the frustration of endlessly driving through city streets in search of an open space. Instead, they can use an app on their mobile phone or another internet-connected device to see where open spaces exist.
What is smart parking’s most significant benefit for the city?
For the city, smart parking helps to alleviate congestion by enabling drivers to find parking faster and to improve air quality by reducing the vehicle emissions that are associated with circling endlessly to find a parking spot. Smart parking solutions also improve the image of a city, increase parking revenue and minimize the daily burden of handling and processing large volumes of coins.
What is smart parking technology and infrastructure?
Smart parking relies on tools such as sensors, cameras, GPS, payment data and other technology to deliver the data that powers parking availability maps and enables more efficient parking enforcement. These data collection points must be connected via a high-speed, high-bandwidth network that feeds data to analytics platforms which can transform vast amounts of raw data into the intelligence that smart parking platforms require.
As a leading provider of connectivity solutions for the nation’s largest businesses and governments, Spectrum Enterprise provides the connectivity framework that cities require to take advantage of smart parking technology. With a fully interactive digital network, thousands of WiFi hotspots, one of the largest LTE cellular networks in the country and symmetrical speeds of 100 Gbps for enterprise clients and city governments, Spectrum Enterprise serves as a trusted technology partner to smart cities throughout the nation.
Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.