2020 may have been a challenging year for the parking industry with uncertain times lying ahead, yet our parking experts remain optimistic about the coming months. With lockdowns lifted and people returning to work, parking occupancy rates have increased and hygiene concerns surrounding public transport have driven more people to their private vehicles. In this Quick Question, we discover which technologies will take center stage – and the emphasis is very much on contactless solutions.
Brian Wolff, President and CEO of Parker Technology
“I see parking headed in a positive direction, with a steady climb in parking volumes, heading towards a probably a new level of new normal. At the same time, I see all sorts of parking operations re-evaluating their resourcing models to cope with, and be successful in, the new normal environment, including ways to social distance and make transactions touchless and frictionless. All of that will culminate in a better parking experience for our parking customers and a more efficient operation for the parking operators.”
Adrian Cseko, Sales Manager at Asura Technologies
“Parking will continue to shift towards contactless solutions which will require automation in access control, parking guidance, and parking enforcement. I think that LPR will be the key component for vehicle identification whilst smart applications will assist with guidance and parking payment.”
Liliana Veloso, Global Business Developer at Worldline
“A worldwide crisis tends to accelerate existing trends, not to completely change them. People want to feel safe and so they will prefer to travel by car, rather than public transport. Parking must support this need for security as a priority. This means offering fewer touchpoints and support prebooking, contactless payments, and other hygienic measures. In going to the new normal Worldline believes that contactless payments will see the largest increase of all.”
Felix Zheng, General Manager at JIESHUN
“During this pandemic, the business of car park owners or car park operators has been badly influenced and damaging to their investment. Meanwhile, we can see that car parking is really in demand and business will still grow at a slow rate. The positive thing, in my opinion, is this pandemic will expedite the usage of smart parking technology, through contactless entry and exit and cashless payment – through these methods, people can reduce the risk of being infected.”
Nick D’Alessio, Senior Business Development Manager at Brother Mobile Solutions
“Here at Brother Mobile Solutions, as we look forward to what’s occurring in the parking industry, we’re optimistic and see things improving somewhat. We monitor our oil and gas business and with oil above $40 a barrel, demand for crude oil transportation is increasing as oil reserves drop which indicates that people are indeed returning to work and the demand for fuel is increasing. So we’re very bullish and see an improvement in the commercial and municipal parking sectors.”
Pete Alcock, Head of Product Marketing at NMI
“We’ve seen that as drivers return to town centers they crave safe and convenient parking experiences and we have noticed that parking payment by mobile app has grown faster and stronger than conventional card payment possibly because it allows touch-free interaction with the parking terminal. At NMI, we suggest that the new generation of mobile payment methods, including pay by QR code, made popular by restaurants during the COVID crisis, will expand its reach into on-street parking. NFC tags embedded into signage will also become more commonplace as more and more mobile devices can access this technology to initiate an instant payment from a mobile wallet like ApplePay or GooglePay.”
Marco Parnisari, Smart Parking Product Manager at Paradox Engineering
“Parking solutions are evolving towards interoperable systems for Smart Cities. If based on open data models and standards like 6LoWPAN, they can be extended to enable multiple urban services, including street lighting, environmental sensing, waste management, traffic surveillance, public WiFi, and more. Projects using open technology cost 30% less, and allow cities to head for true innovation.”
Jussi Tomperi, Managing Director of Portier
“With the pandemic going back and forth it is very difficult to say how things will develop in the short term. Of course, everybody within the industry hopes that business will go back to normal as quickly as possible. On the other hand, with a longer perspective, at least some parking segments could change significantly. Right now, the way we work and travel has dramatically changed – will this return to pre-COVID times or be permanent? In some cases, overall demand could decrease, but as always there will probably be new opportunities, for example, to share parking. So there are interesting parking times ahead, but I think that we just need to make the right decisions.”
Darius Cincys, General Manager, North-West Region at SOFTRA (A.Lot Parking)
“In this changing socioeconomic environment, impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the parking industry is an exception. The discussion in the parking community is all about how to ensure public safety and to generate revenue in case the pandemic continues. The answer to the first question on customer safety is new technologies that enable contactless and touchless reservations, parking access, and payments. These technologies are automatic license plate recognition coupled with mobile payment systems. The answer to the revenue question, we need intelligent solutions that monitor parking lot utilization, and enable park sharing between variable peak hours for business customers, commercial and residential garages, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and retail outlets.”
