Smart Parking Provides Real-Time Parking Data to Rye

With a focus on technology to provide detailed data and analysis, Smart Parking and Mornington Peninsula Shire have been working together to provide a smart city solution in the town of Rye.

As a tourist destination that receives over eight million visitors annually, Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula Shire townships are under increasing pressure to provide a better parking experience for both visitors and residents, especially during the Christmas and Australia Day peak.

To evaluate the potential of smart parking to lower travel times and decrease congestion, the Mornington Peninsula Shire chose Smart Parking to help trial a new smart parking approach in Rye, focusing on the busy summer period over December 2019 to March 2020.

The Shire’s aims were to test real-time parking data’s ability to make parking in the Rye precinct easier and more convenient and to deliver more efficient parking enforcement and boost retail shopping.

Mobilising and deploying within a matter of weeks, Smart Parking installed 454 in-ground vehicle detection sensors and established the IoT gateway using our SmartSpot access points, which were then integrated with project partners J1LED’s LED signage.

Upon entry to Rye, drivers along Pt Nepean and Dundas Street were met with prominent LED signs that displayed real-time parking availability directing drivers to the available parking available in the Rye foreshore, commercial precinct, and along the main road.

In addition to a technology proof of concept, the council conducted a ‘proof of value’ trial to evaluate what impact real-time parking data could have on lowering travel times, congestion and improve access to the shops in Rye.

The Shire conducted an independent evaluation using Smart Parking sensor data and multiple driver surveys for the mainly pre-Covid smart parking trial. The independent evaluation reported smart parking data made significant impacts on reducing ‘hunting time’ (the time taken by drivers to find a park), and included:

• Saving drivers over 1,700 hours in ‘hunting time’ from the use of the real-time parking availability data displayed on LED signage
• Dropping the average time taken to find a park from 4 minutes 14 seconds to 1 minute 41 seconds in the month of March
• Identifying that the average time overstayed in 2P parking was 2 hour and 16 minutes

Importantly, not one driver surveyed reported parking as 'difficult' after the introduction of smart parking in-bay sensors and LED signage, and perceived congestion reduced from 48 percent to 30 percent after the installation.

The impact on retail was measured as well, with the evaluation identifying a potential boost to retail spending of $4,078 per day during summer on the main Pt Nepean Road, by using sensor-based infringement to mitigate the number of overstayed vehicles during high occupancy times.

To support the goal of improving driver experience Smart Parking Limited partnered with Hopstay to deliver a world-first in the form of a smart parking voice bot to help guide drivers. Using Google Assistant’s natural language processing combined with SPL’s open API real-time data, Beta testers were able to ask the bot for available parking by asking, “Hey Mornpen, where is the best place to park near the Rye Hotel?” This innovation is planned for a full ‘go live’ in 2020/21 to improve safety for drivers and a seamless parking experience.

As part of the ongoing trial, Mornington Peninsula Shire will again partner with SPL to further develop and promote smart parking’s ability to further lower travel times, congestion, and emissions for the next tourist season in 2020/21.

About Smart Parking Limited 

Smart Parking Limited is a pioneering technology innovator and services company in the parking industry. With offices in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, along with a rapidly growing global network of expert partners, we aim to bring our intelligent parking sensors and integrated smart parking services to the world. Each year, we install tens of thousands of sensors in a range of environments including shopping centers, supermarkets, airports, commercial parking sites, universities, and large scale municipal street environments. To date, our advanced real-time vehicle parking sensor solution, known as SmartPark, has been adopted in 17 countries. Alongside the technology products division, our managed services division operates and manages thousands of car park spaces across the UK using complementary Automatic Number Plate Recognition/License Plate Recognition (ANPR/LPR) technology. This can be used as a single solution or with the option to be combined with Pay & Display or integrated with sensing technology. Smart Parking Limited has been an Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:SPZ) publicly listed company since early 2011.