Parking is an important part of the transport system. As the number of vehicles increases, so do the demands on the number of parking spaces. Providing adequate parking in areas where residents commute to work, school, shopping, etc. is an extremely difficult task for most cities.
Parking ManagementAlthough good parking management is proving to be beneficial for improving mobility and quality of life in our cities, it is still the least developed area in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) policy.
It is the integration of innovative solutions into parking management that can have a large and rapid effect for planning but also, and above all, for effective change.
If you want to regulate traffic and plan for it in the long term, you need to have a clear vision and an overview of what is happening and where the problem is. To set the right vision for parking, it is important to start with a lot of data and be able to link it properly.
SUMP principles related to parking management are set out in “PARKING AND SUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY PLANNING - How to make parking policies more strategic, effective, and sustainable?”, which was developed within the framework of the EU-funded PARK4SUMP project under the HORIZON 2020 program in 2019. The document presents the 8 most important SUMP principles in the context of parking and gives examples of changes in approach in several cities. Find the document
here.
Technology and InnovationTechnologies and innovations are mainly used in the form of information and guidance systems, cashless parking fee payments, electronic registration, and control of parking or smart parking meters. For innovative development, it is important to use advanced tools such as dispatching, data management, leveraging big data and advanced analytics, and procuring technology modules through standardized interfaces.
One possible combination of technology and innovation is Parking as a Service (PaaS). The PaaS aims to improve the experience of parking and travel by using smart technology to make it easy for drivers to arrive, stay and leave.