Parking Wikipedia

Smart Parking- The next big thing?3 min read

Jan 9, 2017 3 min

Smart Parking- The next big thing?3 min read

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The influence and value of parking in planning for livable communities is often underestimated and not well understood. Smart Parking is more than a necessary element today. Smart Parking enables peoples to find spaces quickly and easily. Less time parking means less stress and happier peoples. Imagine a tool that allows you to effortlessly form a clear picture of where available parking spaces can be found and how long each space has been occupied for.

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People are increasingly happy to use modern solutions in different fields. With consumer behavior undergoing rapid changes, mobile phones are becoming the center of our digital life and we are using it as our primary tool for managing all aspects of our daily lives. No city can become sustainable or a smart city unless it plans for smart parking.

A city must have enough parking spaces to provide their residents and their visitors a place to park their vehicle. If people can’t find a place to park, or if they have to pay too much for parking, these people probably won’t come back to that city to do some more shopping, dining or spending money in any other way. Also, residents must have enough places to park their vehicle nearby their house and workplace.

In a country like India, it opens new doors to goals such as curbs side management, traffic flow management, customer service and even more intelligent services like guiding users to free parking spots.

Additionally, it improves traffic flow in turn leading to reduced congestion, providing statistical and real-time information on parking vacancies. It simplifies parking data collection at a reduced cost, building possibilities for a convenient ‘cashless’ parking.

Not to forget, it is building a safer traffic with effective enforcement of illegal parking activities and encouraging the use of public transportation at times of congestion. From routing and enforcement applications to city dashboards, this detailed parking and violation information can be accessed by various stakeholders.

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This concept of smart parking is not only gaining light in India but also around the world.  In fact, one of the major digital parking solutions was first employed in the US in cities like Chicago, Cincinnati, New York and then gained its foot in other developed and developing countries like India.

Digital collection of parking revenues substantially reduces the cost compared to having an expensive infrastructure in the streets; No theft, fraud, downtime, maintenance and service costs, no expensive coin-handling and minimized environmental impact are some benefits of phone parking. Most importantly digital parking enables automation.

If we use smart parking solutions, 43% lesser time would be spent in parking searches and urban cities can increase revenue up to 20-30% per annum. At large, 10% of the co2 emissions are already being reduced by rectifying the present parking patterns.

With these conscious global attempts towards ecological sustainability and balance, solutions like smart parking are definitely the next big thing which would aim with its services a hand for an overall global well-being, in turn, nurturing humans with the ever growing technological advancements.