What is Parking Guidance?
Posted: Aug, 14, 2020 9:38AM ET • 3 min read
Whether combatting traffic congestion, unclear direction, wasted space, or overfilled garages, the search for parking can be stressful and fruitless. For most people, the frustration that comes with navigating a busy garage is all-too-familiar. It is not only time consuming and costly, but also unnecessary. Parking Guidance Systems are the product of this mounting frustration and the increasing initiative to create smart and sustainable parking solutions. These systems are designed to help curate a positive parking experience by enhancing guidance and increasing productivity of parking facilities. Combining technology, communication, traffic monitoring, and signage solutions, parking guidance systems help motorists easily locate available parking spaces. But, not all systems are created equal.
The Parking Guidance industry is dominated by two primary forms of guidance: ultrasonic and camera-based.
Ultrasonic technology is more limited, providing a basic level of occupancy monitoring. The sensors are installed over every space, requiring a complex installation and a facility shutdown. They monitor single spaces and provide simple red/green light guidance and offer standard wayfinding signage to help parkers locate available spaces, as well as basic data on garage activity. However, this is an outmoded technology; due to the limited data set it collects, it does not have the capacity for adding additional value over time.
Contrary to ultrasonic, smart camera-based parking guidance solutions not only require substantially less hardware, but also support far more than guidance. With the ability to reserve specific parking bays, enforce and regulate facility policies, collect valuable license plate recognition (LPR) data, help locate vehicles, and track visitor behaviour, this advanced technology delivers an improved parker and operator experience.
Camera-based systems are installed quickly with little disruption to daily operations. With camera based guidance, smart-sensors with dual cameras are installed above the garage’s driving lane to monitor multiple spaces. This unique vantage point provides the cameras with an unobstructed view of the parked vehicles – while providing parkers with clear sight lines for easy guidance and navigation. These systems not only offer red/green light guidance to indicate available spaces, but they are equipped with sensors that can change to virtually any colour to indicate specific parking opportunities (permit parking, handicap spaces, premium bays, etc), vastly improving the customer parking journey. These software-based parking guidance systems are built with an expanded capacity to support future upgrades with a wealth of features that can increase revenues, streamline operations, and heighten surveillance. Additionally, the data generated by these innovative “sensor with a brain” devices serves to fuel the system’s built-in analytics and control platform, to update digital wayfinding signage in real time, and to empower future add-ons that deliver strategic benefits for parkers, owners and/or operators.
For years parkers, owners, and operators have been under the false belief that parking guidance was limited to just that: guidance. But, as the parking industry evolved, it has become clear that these systems could and should do so much more. The parking journey is not just limited to finding a space and neither is parking guidance. These systems are continually improving so that every garage is built for the next-generation with the flexibility to grow as parking needs, software functionality, and technology progress. Built with the core focus of providing parkers with real-time data to help inform and enhance their parking decisions, these systems not only elevate the customer experience and increase satisfaction, but they are also meant to maximize garage efficiency, expand revenue opportunities, improve security and enhance operational control.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Park Assist is the parking industry leading camera focused innovator with the most camera based parking guidance installations in the world. Our technology helps customers effortlessly find parking spaces in real-time as well as find their cars when they return. Simultaneously, we provide parking operators with tools to improve customer satisfaction, create new revenue opportunities, realize greater operational control, capture parker analytics and expand CCTV capabilities.
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