While the Coronavirus Emptied Parking Garages Around the World, Some Companies Pivoted to Accelerated Innovation
Instead of making lemonade from lemons, call it making a profit — and progress — from a pandemic.
When Covid-19 hit in 2020, the team at New Zealand-based Frogparking pivoted to investing its R&D into developing an innovative cloud-based Parking Access and Revenue Control System (PARCS).
Led by Shareena Sandbrook, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, innovation is a core strategic pillar for Frogparking, with the goal of delivering truly customized customer solutions.
“We have delivered with a PARCS that has revolutionized the industry for the first time in 30 years,” Sandbrook, said.
Frogparking stands as a global leader in comprehensive parking management solutions, committed to delivering cutting-edge technologies that redefine the future of parking management. With a focus on data analytics, accessibility, safety, and end-user experiences, Frogparking continues to push the boundaries of innovation in the parking industry.
At the same time, they have maintained their agile and ‘Kiwi’ culture, resulting in incredibly resilient software and hardware products that are developed and manufactured in-house. This allows the team to make changes in real time for their customers, with no hidden costs.
The components of Frogparking’s PARCS:
FrogGate is the world’s first, and currently only, barrier arm that can self-reset upon impact. It virtually eliminates operational downtime, high maintenance expenses, and high employee time/costs.
It is made of ultra-light-weight carbon fiber, so it’s incredibly fast. Data shows that a Frogparking ticketless PARCS results in approximately three seconds per car traffic rate at exit (when no at-gate payment is required). And about six seconds where payment is required. They contrasted this with a ticketed system (where every driver must input a ticket), and the minimum is closer to six seconds per vehicle.
The FrogGate has a unique design, specifically made to clear lower ceiling heights, so it can be installed in just about any area. It boasts LiDAR technology that operates within a safety ring on the FrogGate. Essentially, it’s an incredibly low-liability barrier arm, as LiDAR detects anything within a potential impact zone and immediately stops the barrier arm. The LiDAR ring also means there’s no need to cut in any magnetic loops to the deck, which can be a costly endeavor, especially when retrofitting.
FrogKiosk is a parking payment terminal that is completely digital, so ticket stock and cash handling issues are null and void. With fewer moving parts than any other parking payment terminal on the market, the associated operating costs are significantly lower. One of Frogparking’s customers has shown a reduction of $50,000 per annum alone from ticketing stock.
FrogKiosk hosts an incredible range of payment methods, from stock-standard credit cards to obscure payment methods, such as app payments, web portal payments, Ali-pay, WeChat Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and so on.
The FrogKiosk boasts unlimited integration capabilities, through additional payment providers, as well as existing hardware. Rate changes are easily, and instantly, applied to FrogKiosk terminals in a matter of seconds.
It is not just rate changes either. A recent site visit resulted in a customer making a request for a change to the display screen, and within five minutes, the entire screen and workflow had updated. Even better, there were no charges, no delays and no unresponsive “helpdesk tickets.”
FrogLPR is a license plate recognition camera that harnesses AI technology. The FrogLPR is already future-proofed against impending data and privacy law changes. In other words, it can convert license plates at the unit so that only necessary data is sent to the cloud. With a few clicks of a mouse, Frogparking customers can stop images or turn off permissions.
FrogLPR can identify vehicle details within the blink of an eye. It can take multiple snaps in quick succession and upload the information in realtime. Not only does it identify regular license plates, it also works with alphanumeric and vanity plates.
FrogLPR has a neural network that has been loaded onto the camera’s internal processor so it can even go one step further by detecting state plate identification, as well as make, model and vehicle color. All of this is instantly uploaded onto a cloud-based server, so their customers can respond to trends and surges in real time.
Finally, FrogHub. Frogparking’s entire smart parking systems are connected to this dashboard to give incredible insights into a customer’s parking operations – from overviews of the systems performance, down to detailed occupancy, revenue, utilization, sessions, 3D modeling and even a real-time rates engine.
As Frogparking’s entire system is run on an ultra-low latency network, changes can be made in real-time for no extra cost to their customers. FrogHub then backs it all up with incredible reporting capabilities that are fully customizable, so it aligns to a customer’s specific needs.
Utilized at USC
The University of Southern California (USC) utilizes a Frogparking PARCS system.
“Frogparking’s customer service is off the charts; we’re used to providing world-class service, and it’s refreshing to also receive it,” said David Donovan, Associate Director of USC Transportation. “Their technology is just so cool; it’s beautiful to watch, simple to implement, easy to use from a customer standpoint, and it’s versatile beyond belief,” Donovan said. “Everything we have asked Frogparking to do, they’ve been able to do quickly and easily.”
Thanks to Frogparking PARCS, the university has had a payback period of only 67 days on their equipment costs. The recent installation is bringing in so much unrealized revenue that USC can now invest in upgrading other parking assets and performing preventative maintenance.
“Our revenue has more than doubled versus this same time period in 2023,” said Donovan. “That isn’t an accident – the entire process is so much more streamlined and automated now, that all former revenue leaks have been completely closed.”
USC data indicates that all parking revenue collected at their site is generated from only 17% of visitors. Such data allows USC to quantify true parking revenue by including the correct portion of parking fees from retailer tenancy agreements and applying to traffic.
Both the revenue optimization and short payback period have been echoed throughout other Frogparking PARCS install locations.
For example, another install at a large shopping center in New Zealand, used data from their Frogparking PARCS to optimize revenue. They did this by narrowing the free parking period from one hour to 30 minutes. This resulted in a 46% improvement in daily revenue that was immediately visible in the data.
This same shopping center broke even after four months. This increased time is attributed to the mall being a new construction, with its anchor tenants not opening for business until two months of operation. Essentially, they had made enough in parking revenue from the Frogparking PARCS to cover their annual system charges in under one month of operation.
With a system that operates in real-time, with ground-breaking new technology designed to save both time and money, PARCS is the sweet payoff from a bitter time in recent history.
Visit Frogparking at www.frogparking.com.
