Smart Phone to Unlock the City of Fremantle’s Integrated Parking Management System
The City of Fremantle has chosen Database Consultants Australia (DCA) as the preferred supplier to deliver its smart city parking strategy. The city is looking to improve community parking satisfaction and has chosen DCA’s Integrated Parking Management System (IPMS) to provide a higher quality community experience.
DCA Director of Smart City Technologies Sandy Del Papa said the smart phone is key to citizens unlocking the benefits of smart cities. “Through the introduction of state-of-the-art technology, we’ll look to make the best of the City of Fremantle’s parking network and deliver greater efficiency and optimization of available parking. We’ll support the city with optimal access and insight to mobility data to increase the city’s ability to make data-driven decisions and ultimately deliver a truly connected parking experience to the citizens of Fremantle” Del Papa said.
The imminent delivery of the IPMS aligns directly with the city’s goals of developing a responsible social, economic and environmentally efficient city and delivering the subsequent benefits to the community. DCA will deliver an integrated suite of technologies including pay by smart phone solution, PayStay. This proven technology will enable motorists to search via their smart phones for parking, navigate to parking and pay only for the time they require, with optional notification of when their parking will expire, all within a single highly functional app.
In partnership with DCA the city will also address the emerging demand for digital permit solutions, with the introduction of ePermits. ePermits offer both convenience and flexibility to citizens with online applications, payment and issuing, with flexible digital visitor permits.
Park Place Launches Ballparc Solutions for Event and Enforcement in Columbus Market
Ballparc is pleased to announce the rollout of its solutions with Park Place Parking in the operator’s Columbus, Ohio market. Ballparc Event, a versatile mobile point-of-sale for parking, will help Park Place provide a more convenient event parking experience to the Columbus community. The cloud-based system allows Park Place to offer guests a variety of payment methods, including credit cards, cash, prepaid parking reservations, and VIP lists. The new system facilitates a faster transaction time which will promote better traffic flow with less congestion. Management will also be able to make game-time adjustments with real-time visibility into space inventory during events to help navigate consumers to the right parking spot.
In addition, Park Place will use Ballparc’s smarter citation management platform, Enforcement, to patrol and manage their non-event operations. The system will allow Park Place to run their operation efficiently by having all paid vehicle information in the palm of their hand. Additionally, the system offers violators the ability to communicate with Park Place, review the citation details, and pay the offense from the same website online.
“Park Place is excited to partner with the Ballparc team to improve customer service in the Columbus, Ohio market,” said Shawn Compton, Park Place General Manager. “Park Place prides itself on bringing ingenuity, resourcefulness, and vision to our customers and clients. It is great to know that the Ballparc team shares our values and we look forward to continued success.”
Imperial Helps Parking Control Management to Maximize Service Standards for Clients
A long-standing partnership with Imperial is continuing to provide Parking Control Management (PCM) with the support and specialist software to help the company maintain its impressive record for service development. The company is now extending its use of Imperial’s cashless parking system and planning to introduce the enforcement specialist’s automated correspondence system for improving service efficiencies as well as its graphic mapping tools to maximize the effectiveness of parking attendant deployment.
“Our growth as a specialist in effective car park management reflects our commitment to be a reliable and focused service partner for our clients,” says Andrew Oliver, Head of UK Operations at PCM. “But, our continued success has also been founded on adhering to the strict Codes of Practice provided by the IPC and working closely with key suppliers who share our principles of partnership and responsiveness. Indeed, the support provided by Imperial continues to play an instrumental role in helping us to provide our clients with the most effective cost-neutral enforcement solution for their parking facilities.”
PCM’s relationship with Imperial began when the company moved from immobilization to ticket-based enforcement as a result of legislative changes for parking on private land introduced by the government in 2012. Harnessing Imperial’s many years of experience in PCN (Parking Charge Notice) processing, PCM completed a radical overhaul of its operation in response to the new regulations. This included full training of patrol attendants and back-office staff, the introduction of new processing technology and the replacement of over 0.5 million car park signs at all client car parks.
By capitalizing on hosted software systems as well as the training resources and expertise of Imperial’s Business Processing Unit in Northampton, the company was able to take the changes in its stride and maintain its focus on enforcement actions to meet the specific parking requirements of each client.
Today, PCM manages no less than 3,000 different permit parking schemes for residential and commercial sites and restricted parking areas right across the UK. Its openly tough approach for ensuring compliance with the parking requirements of its clients has proved to be particularly effective in densely populated metropolitan areas, where only authorized users and permit holders have access to limited parking facilities.
Passport Hires New Executive to Lead M&A and Partnership Efforts
Igor Karpovich is the latest executive hire at Passport, the world’s leader in mobile payments in the transportation industry. Karpovich has been named the chief corporate development officer.
The company raised $43 million in Series C investment from Bain Capital Ventures in December. At that time, Passport made a commitment to hire at least 50 employees this year, aggressively seeking the best talent to meet the needs of clients, expand its global reach and accelerate product growth and innovation. The company has since added more than 20 team members, including recent hires Meredith Cage, vice president of product, and Duncan Mapes, vice president of engineering.
Karpovich, the newest executive team member, comes to Passport with a wealth of international business experience. He had most recently served as the senior vice president of Verifone in London. After earning his MBA from Harvard Business School, he led teams for companies such as GE Capital, where he was the vice president of strategy and business development; Citigroup Global Wealth Management as the managing director of global business development and head of venture banking for Sberbank in Moscow. He also founded two companies as an entrepreneur.
“The transportation industry has been undergoing a tremendous shift in recent years and Passport is in a unique position to continue to lead the charge in mobility and payments,” said Bob Youakim, Passport CEO. “With the addition of Igor, we will accelerate our strategic growth initiatives and international expansion efforts to support our continued growth trajectory.”
So how do we prepare for the future of parking?
Unfortunately, there is not a clear-cut answer to this question. The question becomes even tougher to answer because the automobile manufacturers haven’t created a standardized platform of how vehicles will communicate with our systems. The need to install technology that is flexible, yet proven, is the best way to approach the conundrum that we are in.
When looking at the technology in a parking asset, you should consider the following:
• Does the technology have open API’s that easily (and securely) connect to 3rd party systems? As technology progresses, there may be multiple API’s that you need to connect to in order to service all of the new vehicles with differing communication systems. How much does it cost to use that API?!
• Is the system “modular” so you may add and remove hardware as technology advances? Being able to change out individual components, instead of entire units, will help reduce your long-term cost of ownership.
• Regular software updates should be included. Not only will this allow you to ensure you have the latest functionality and reporting mechanisms, software updates typically include security patches to prevent data breaches.
• Can I manage the system in the Cloud? Cloud-based systems tend to have the best flexibility and features. However, you must make sure you have a stable internet connection with a suitable backup.
While these points may not completely answer the question, it’s a baseline to setup your parking system for the future without over spending! There is still time before there will be mass adoption of autonomous and connected cars, so no need to panic. Let’s do what we can to prepare and be flexible enough to quickly pivot once there is a need.
