By John Van Horn
Cities have found themselves in a difficult financial position this past decade. Plummeting property values have led to lower tax revenues. Municipalities are looking for ways to increase income and lower expenses. No department has been spared.
Parking is one of the few departments that generate substantial revenue and it’s natural for municipal leaders to look in that direction. Increasing revenue would seem easy: raise parking rates. The problem is that with on street parking, upping the rates to say $3 an hour means with traditional technology one has to insert 12 quarters into the meter, 24 if you are parking for two hours. There are also issues with collecting, counting, and banking so much coin.
In addition, cities have been looking at how to increase rates and use that increase to help reduce congestion in their cores and are looking for statistical information that is almost impossible to collect manually. Length of stay and capacity information by time of day can assist not only in rate setting but also in enforcement personnel allocation.
San Francisco and Los Angeles are installing equipment that will use technology like those discussed below to increase revenue, cut operating costs, and provide better service to their customers. Chicago and Indianapolis are embarking on programs where they are partnering with the private sector. These partnerships maximize technology to create efficiencies unheard of less than a decade ago.
Increasing parking rates have driven Portland, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Charlotte, Atlanta, and many others to embrace new payment options and replace outdated equipment so they can more easily collect the higher rates. New York City is embarking on a program to bring all 88,000 of its parking spaces under a Pay and Display technology.
New technologies using internet and cell phone communications have enabled cities to offer many different payment options to their customers. Pay and Display and Pay by Space equipment accept credit and debit cards, coin and bills and reduce the number of pieces of equipment that need to be visited on a regular basis by city personnel. (One P and D or P by S machine can replace up to 15 or more single space meters.) Since this equipment is on-line it can report malfunctions, tell managers how much money is to be collected, and provide a plethora of statistical data. All this reduces costs and ensures that proper audits can be maintained.
“About two thirds of my budget goes to collection and maintenance,” says Soumya Dey, the Deputy Associate Director of the Department of Transportation for Washington DC, “If we can get a substantial amount of payments to on line facilities (credit card, pay by cell) we will greatly reduce our costs. Similarly if the equipment can communicate with us and tell us when there is a problem or when they need to be serviced, we can become more proactive rather than reactive and reduce our maintenance expenses.”
Other technology can provide similar cost savings. Pay by Cell Phone, for instance, removes the need for any on street equipment greatly lowering start up and ongoing expenses. Single Space meters that take credit cards are becoming popular with many cities. Like their multi-space cousins, they communicate with the city through the cell phone network and can text information directly to maintenance personnel’s smart phones and report when they need to be emptied of coin, meaning maintenance and collection personnel can be allocated more efficiently.
“Bringing in pay by cell technology takes some time,” said Dey. “We cannot simply move to that method of payment without leaving some alternative means in place. Perhaps we will have pay by cell spaces on one side of the street, and payment equipment on the other.”
These technologies can be mixed so customers are offered different ways to pay. Some may prefer the pay by cell option, while others may want to use cash or credit cards. All are compatible and work across each platform.
As for enforcement, technology has enabled Parking Enforcement Officers (PEOs) to do their jobs more efficiently. Pay by Space equipment can report which space is in violation. Hand held citation writers make tickets fast and accurate. Built in cameras can record the violation, cutting down on the numbers of disagreements between parkers and officers.
On line databases and ‘auto-chalk’ systems that use mobile CCTV and Automatic License Plate Recognition systems to track length of stay of vehicles, enable efficient enforcement, and can identify scofflaws so cars can be booted or towed.
The use of credit cards brings another benefit to municipalities. People have a tendency to “top up” the time they need to the maximum allowed when they use credit cards. Why risk the possibility of a citation when it’s only a few more dollars on a card? The difference between adding a fee on a card or putting cash in a meter is considerable.
The fact that money is deposited directly into the city’s bank account rather than having to deal with literally tons of coin on a daily basis, and pay the fees banks require to deposit it, is a major consideration and can more than offset the fees charged by credit card company.
Another technology that is now being installed both in test applications and recently ‘live’ in San Francisco and Los Angeles is the use of sensors in each on street space to provide statistical data and in some instances, give enforcement personnel length of stay information when parking is limited by time only. Some systems link the sensor to the PEO’s handheld and can tell them if the vehicle has overstayed.
These sensors can be connected to meters so when the car leaves the meter is ‘reset’ not leaving any money “on the meter” when the next vehicle arrives.
All these technologies can provide a substantial increase in compliance and/or revenue without a requisite increase in personnel. In some cases, the revenue increase can be seen with a reduction in personnel and costs.
Financial directors often ask for return on investment information. When cities compute ROI they will include reduced operating costs, increased ‘up’ time, and lower maintenance costs of the more advanced equipment. Those are fairly easy to quantify. However the major return is often increased revenue due to credit card usage and the ability to set rates using good street by street, hour by hour statistical information.
Knowledge is king when rates are set. In the past it has been done with sketchy information and often political influence. With good statistics a city parking administrator can make his or her case for raising or lowering rates based on knowledge, not guesswork. The increase in revenue will reflect that.
Advanced parking technology is helping cities solve their fiscal issues by giving administrators the tools to effectively manage this most valuable asset.
John Van Horn filed this content through a partnership with Xerox. The content shared is the author’s opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of Xerox. The Focus: Real Business, Real Opinion posts are designed to spark open discussion on a variety of trending industry topics.
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