Over this last year, curbside parking spots are being used more than ever before. Whether it’s to accommodate extra tables for patio dining or making space for the increased curbside pick-ups due to the pandemic – municipalities across North America are realizing just how important it is to understand and manage their curbside parking resources.
For any organization, a seamless and efficient parking strategy begins with access to key data and analytics. A thorough understanding of the activity in a parking facility can point to areas of success and opportunities for improvement. Having real-time data is extremely useful to implement a smarter, more effective parking experience. The rise of parking technology and cloud-based parking platforms have made data collection more accessible, empowering operators to be more strategic and proactive in their decision-making.
So, how does it work?
Cloud-based parking platforms digitize the entire management and enforcement process, reducing time-consuming administrative tasks and piles of paperwork. Parking features like License Plate Recognition (LPR) enable parking operators to digitally capture vehicle data and images from a fixed camera or handheld device. Through a simple license plate scan, LPR gathers valuable vehicle information upon entry and exit from a parking lot – all in a matter of seconds. Once it’s collected, the data is then optimized and stored into the system for parking operators and enforcement officers to easily access at their convenience.
What’s the benefit of collecting parking analytics?
Currently, some cities are still manually enforcing and collecting data by hand. Not only is this tedious and inefficient, but it also increases the chances of error. Today’s parking software is a lot more dependable for operators as it collects, organizes and saves relevant data in a centralized place.
In the case of curbside parking, parking software allows operators to effectively update curbside regulations and actively inform enforcement officers of new rules and by-laws so they can be more responsive to immediate changes in their city. With the pandemic and the intermittent lockdown measures in many cities, this type of parking technology is even more essential.
What kind of data is collected?
The main purpose of parking data is to understand how your parking resources are being used. This real-time data includes parking usage and volume, occupancy and availability, violation lifecycles and payment history. Not to mention, it also tracks enforcement performance including the number of times a license plate was scanned and the number of violations issued in a given timeframe.
At Roker, our cloud-based parking platform is designed to address daily parking challenges within any city or organization. All of our parking features work together to generate informative reports and analytics to support parking operators in making better business decisions. To learn more about our parking platform, contact us here.
