“There’s a process of going in, and leaving and paying, and doing this seamlessly. And by the way, much quicker than the experience that you had with a gate,” Dan Fortinberry, division manager for the city of Cincinnati Parking Services, said as he described its new parking management program for 14 surface lots and garages, making up some 10,000 spaces.
The city entered a partnership last year with Premium Parking, which deployed its GLIDEPARCS technology. As part of the transition, gates at the entrances and exits of city-owned parking facilities were removed, as well as the devices dispensing the parking tickets, which had been read just prior to initiating payment and exiting the lot or garage.
“It’s just as I suspected. People have been managing the off-street [parking] without gates and ticket spitters for a long time. And doing it well. Getting reliable, forceable revenue, understanding enforcement data,” Fortinberry said.
Today, when drivers enter a city lot or garage, license plate reading technology begins the parking session — just as it formerly did when the driver tapped a button and retrieved a ticket. When they are ready to leave, signage in the facility walks users through the touchless payment process using QR codes, as well as other ways to pay.
“As far as the system goes, signage is key,” Ken Smith, vice president of municipal services at Premium Parking, said.
The license plate reader “is just another way to verify the plate number associated with the phone number, and make the transaction happen,” he said. “We don’t need to have a plate number. We can use a descriptive process as well.”
If a driver leaves the lot or garage without paying, the city is able to send them an invoice, Fortinberry said, noting that most parking locations have multiple payment options like the "pay-on-foot or a kiosk."
The migration away from traditional parking garage equipment which involved the paper tickets, credit card readers and other devices was precipitated, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said, during which the public came to prefer touchless options, aided by smartphone technology enabling a host of digital payment options.
“A lot of it is in response to the way people are paying nowadays,” Fortinberry said. “People are paying differently. They’re not carrying cash.”
The new system, he added, also helps to eliminate long lines of cars queuing at the exits or entrances.
“It’s a quicker, more environmentally friendly, and customer-oriented experience in an off-street facility with the installation of the gate-less,” he said. “And cost-of-ownership has just been really reduced through not having to continue to deal with the maintenance on this equipment.”
The new system has seen additional revenue, Fortinberry said, indicating users appreciate having additional and convenient ways to pay: “We’ve seen positive adoption to this.”
Cities are quickly sidelining old legacy parking systems for newer, often cloud-based technologies which modernize payments — and can propel them toward digital curb management practices. Last year, Boston transitioned to a new system with Passport technology, retiring 40-year-old siloed equipment.
Virginia Beach, Va., with technology from eleven-x, has transitioned more than 1,000 parking spaces in its “resort area” to a new system. It uses restructured parking rates and resident discounts to help reduce congestion, encourage more curbside parking turnover, and gain new data related to parking demand and other metrics.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has partnered with ParkHelp, which installed cloud-connected sensors in 53 of Metro’s parking facilities — alerting riders to available spaces via digital signage located at entrances.
