Free Flow parking – simple and convenient!

ASURA Technologies Ltd. covered the free flow model in general in their previous article as an upcoming trend in traffic solutions. Now we take a closer look at free flow system implementation in the parking sector. (meet ASURA in October in Hamburg during the ITS conference on booth B5403)

The mechanics of free flow parking are similar to free flow tolling. The idea is to set up the parking environment in a way that the flow of traffic is not obstructed by gates or barriers and create a system that monitors parking events ensuring that they are paid and accounted for.

The Basics

There are three mandatory components to operate a free flow parking system; the first is a parking application for clients or at least a publicly accessible and mobile friendly website to facilitate transactions. The app/website is used mainly to process parking payments and may or may not include functions for the parker’s convenience like a user profile, tracking free parking spaces at the chosen parking lot, navigation to the parking lot or online offers and discounts to be redeemed at businesses nearby the parking facility.

The second component is a system capturing and filing parking events while also tracking and matching payments with the events. The link between a parking event and a payment is the license plate number. That is why ALPR is a great choice for parking event registration as a common point of reference for vehicles. In free flow setups event detection is a key factor, and additional vehicle identification tools like vehicle make and model recognition using video analytics is a useful add-on for events where the license plate is only partly legible.

The third component is a system administration platform used by the operator to set pricing, issue parking permits and get statistics on the parking operation. It’s basically an operator’s room, the brain of the whole parking operation.

Benefits of free flow

There is no reason for an upgrade of course, if the new system does not offer clearly identifiable take outs. As ALPR-based vehicle registration for payment and enforcement are enabled combined with mobile payment solutions and parking applications that are spreading and gaining popularity, annoying elements of parking, like ticketing can become a thing of the past. Free flow eliminates barriers and thereby congestion on entry and exit of parking lots, just as making access cards obsolete by handling exceptions using custom parking rule sets for the vehicle lists. From the parkers’ point of view free flow offers unmatched convenience of use. For the operator, decreased operating expenses because of the high degree of automation, increased revenues due to a higher turnover as a result of unobstructed access to the facility, the convenience of payment and 24/7 automatic monitoring and enforcement.

Moreover, if we look at setting up a free flow parking operation from the scratch, we see an asset-light solution, arguably the most economic installation there is.

The system may completely omit costly park meters or payment kiosks, and barriers. The equipment you need for the operation are cameras set up at entries and exits, a server that handles on-site data processing and the pieces of software we covered above.

Limitations

At the current point in time, fully automated free flow parking operations a more fit to closed, off-street parking environments, but there are already solutions underway to provide convenient and automatically monitored parking solutions for the on-street environment, merging aspects of manual and automated parking management. Which we will cover in the next article.

To be continued…