Home > Facility Technologist > May 2008

Tom Condon, RPA, FMA Parking Goes High-Tech

Innovations for this area of the facility can save space, time, and money.

By Tom Condon, RPA, FMA

As technology continues to permeate virtually every aspect of facilities, even those areas that have been traditionally low-tech are being transformed. Among recent additions to those aspects making the leap to high-tech are parking systems. No longer just concrete, asphalt, and paper tickets, many parking lots and garages are featuring intelligent, self managing innovations.

robotic parking systems Facilities can save space and time with robotic parking systems. This technology, often deployed for underground parking facilities, does not require a person to transport vehicles to their spaces. The system’s mechanism does the work instead. (Photo: Boomerang Self Storage Automation)

As with many facility technologies, the major advances in parking systems were first seen in Asia. For instance, parking lots in Shanghai and Hong Kong have, for years, had sensors in parking spaces that detect if a space is occupied. This allows for visual displays at the parking lot entrances to show visitors which areas have empty spaces. With this technology, those looking to park their vehicles no longer need to drive around searching for a space. They can also get in and out of the lot faster, which helps to increase user satisfaction.

The sensor technology has made it to the United States with advanced parking systems like the one being used at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. There, drivers can quickly and easily find an open space by viewing availability on a status board at the entrance of the airport’s parking garage.

The latest versions of these systems have taken this concept to a new level with automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology. ALPR uses video cameras and special software that can read license plates through optical character recognition (OCR). The camera takes a picture of the car, and special software analyzes the image to find the license plate and read the number. ALPR can recognize a plate in a fraction of a second in light or dark conditions—even when the car is moving.

ALPR technology is now mature and very accurate. The most modern systems combine day and night cameras, an OCR processing chip, and lighting in a single unit.

automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology Parking garage staff members can oversee the comings and goings of vehicles using automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology linked to their computer desktops. (Photo: PIPS Technology, a Federal Signal Company)

With an ALPR equipped parking garage, the system reads the license plate on a car as it enters the garage and logs the date and time. When that car exits, another ALPR camera reads the license plate, the parking duration is calculated, and the driver is charged accordingly. This eliminates the need to use parking tickets to track the time in the lot. (In garages where drivers pay in advance, they punch in their license plate number, and the system calculates the fee.)

One advantage of using this type of system is that the facility manager (fm) knows what vehicles are in the lot and when each enters and leaves. This can eliminate some of the traditional challenges of parking management, such as the lost ticket scam in which people park for several days, but claim they parked for one day and lost their ticket. Rather than pay what they really owe, they pay the lost ticket fee, which is usually the rate for a single day. With ALPR, there is no doubt about when the car entered, and there is a digital photo with a date and time stamp as proof.

Also with this technology, no one has to audit the lot looking for possible scammers; the database holds all the information. However, if there is a need to audit a large parking lot, the fm can have a mobile ALPR system mounted on a vehicle that can then be driven through the lot to scan the license plates of parked cars. This approach replaces manual audits, which can take hours to perform.

 

ALPR is also used inside large parking lots to aid in management. Some lots set up ALPR checkpoints where license plates are read to keep track of how many cars are in the lot and how many are in each section. This generates an accurate count of vehicles in each section, and it is also a great help when a customer forgets where he or she parked. Instead of driving around looking for the vehicle, parking managers can simply look up the plate number in the ALPR system and see the section in which the plate was last scanned.

In lots where parkers pay by the month, ALPR can act as an access control system, automatically scanning plates as vehicles enter and allowing in only those who have paid. An ALPR checkpoint can also be used to detect unauthorized parkers who trespass on sections of the lot that are reserved.

In congested urban areas, another technology has been changing parking garage operations. Robotic parking garages stack vehicles in a rack like boxes in a warehouse. Cars entering this type of garage are driven onto a large, flat platform that is handled by the garage’s robotic mechanisms. That is the last time a person needs to touch the vehicle; the system does the rest, taking the car up to an open slot and sliding it in. When the parker pays, the system returns the car to the lobby by way of the same robotic system.

There are significant advantages to robotic parking. The first is that it can squeeze far more cars into the same space as a conventional garage does. Because there are no drive ramps or passenger elevators, the robotic garage can require only about 60% of the ground footprint of a conventional garage with the same capacity.

Another benefit is reduced operational costs. With a robotic parking system, one person can manage a large garage. In addition to staff reductions, the cleaning, repainting, and resealing that is required on conventional garages is significantly reduced. The elimination of passenger elevators also reduces ongoing maintenance costs.

The fact that there are no vehicles being driven around in a robotic parking system brings additional benefits. Because there is no exhaust in this type of garage, the facility can be located underground or in enclosed areas that would otherwise require massive air exhaust and carbon dioxide detection systems.

Since there are not yet any “Jetson style” flying cars many of us have been waiting for, we’ll all have to deal with parking challenges for the foreseeable future. And with the number of vehicles on the roads expected to increase considerably over the next few decades, many fms will need to find creative solutions to accommodate parking needs. ALPR technology and robotic parking garages may be able to help ease the task.

Condon, a Facility Technologist and former facility manager, is a contributing author for BOMI Institute’s revised Technologies in Facility Management textbook. He works for System Development Integration, a Chicago, IL-based firm committed to improving the performance, quality, and reliability of client business through technology.

Questions can be submitted to Condon by sending e-mail to tcondon@sdienterprises.com. Past editions of this column are available online at www.TodaysFacilityManager.com. Discuss your parking technology experiences in real time on Facility Blog! The blog can be found at www.TodaysFacilityManager.com/facilityblog08.

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