The city is considering using drones to collect data on capacity and utilization of parking downtown, including when and where parking is used at different times of the day and week.
The analysis is part of a broader effort to take inventory of the city’s parking before massive projects like the amphitheater and soccer stadium are expected to increase parking demand downtown, said Mobile GR Director Jessica Smith.
“We’ve got big transformational projects and the No. 1 question I get is, ‘Do we have enough parking?’“ Smith told the city’s public safety committee on Tuesday, July 29. ”I wanted to make sure that I had data to talk about that.”
Mobile GR staff outlined the city’s surveillance policies and shared how the drones would be used to collect parking utilization data during Tuesday’s public safety committee meeting. The Grand Rapids City Commission scheduled an Aug. 12 public hearing for residents to learn more about the proposal and share their input with the city.
City staff acknowledged potential resident concerns about drone surveillance but assured the public safety committee that the drones would not violate privacy laws or be used to collect any identifying information of cars downtown.
Mobile GR planner Max Dillivan said drones provide greater anonymity to motorists than if city staff were to go out and manually count how many cars were in parking lots, which would require staff to take note of license plate numbers.
It would also be less time consuming and less costly than sending staff out to manually count cars in every parking lot across the city.
The drones would only capture a “birds-eye view” of the parking lot, noting the color and position of each vehicle in the lot without recording any license plate numbers.
“This provides a snapshot so we have more of an apples-to-apples comparison of the data,” Dillivan told the public safety committee Tuesday. “It will be less disruptive to the public.”
The drones would be deployed to take photos of parking lot usage at four times throughout the day: in the morning peak hour, noon, afternoon peak hour, and early evenings. The study would take place over a three-week period, Dillivan said.
The drones would fly about 300-400 feet above ground level and would only take a snapshot directly above the parking lot to capture how many cars are in the lot, he said. They would not capture any other photos or videos, including looking horizontally into the windows of buildings downtown.
The city plans to contract with two Detroit -based consultants, OHM and Quantifly, to conduct the parking study. Dillivan said the drone images would be collected by the consultants and the city would not receive any raw images captured by the drones downtown.
No information was shared at Tuesday’s meeting about when the study could take place. Smith said the drone data collection would cost around $35,000, and the entire parking analysis project is expected to cost around $180,000.
The city’s fiscal committee would have to approve the funding for the drone usage before it could take place, which would happen after the public hearing, Smith said.
There was a discussion about the city’s surveillance policy at Tuesday’s committee meeting, and Dillivan said the city intends to provide notice to residents about scheduled drone activity in the area to help address surveillance concerns.
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