Sunshine Coast Council Looks to the Future of Parking

The Sunshine Coast is one of the most renowned and recognisable areas of Australia. Located in Queensland, it spans around 60km of coastline lined with unbroken beaches, and is also home to popular tourist drawcards such as Australia Zoo and Underwater World marine park, as well as a myriad of other attractions such as lakes, mountains, reserves and more.

With locals and tourists numbering in the millions, Sunshine Coast Council wanted a parking management system that was not only robust and cutting-edge, but was also scalable and able to be expanded on in the future.

Thanks to our relationship with Telstra, and the viability of our system, Smart Parking was selected to supply a car park management solution.

With the initial focus being on a targeted area of Maroochydore, Smart Parking are scheduled to begin the install our Smart Park system in August 2018.

This initial install will include our latest dual-detection in-ground sensors, as well as SmartSpot gateways to relay the data from the sensors to SmartCloud, our IoT platform.

Once in SmartCloud, this information is made visible to Council operators via the online dashboard. This not only shows live parking events, but affords users a detailed site overview, meaning informed decisions can be made around how the status of each individual bay is regulated. As well, detailed reports can be generated, and the Council also has the power to generate customised, targeted reporting themselves, without having to bring in external IT contractors.

A key requirement in the brief was also to ensure that the system installed would be able to be expanded on in the future. This benefit is integral to our system as it has been designed from day one to be a true smart city tool. By simply installing more sensors and SmartSpots, we can streamline these into SmartCloud at the touch of a button.

As well, our SmartSpots can be opened up to third party contractors, meaning sensor-based services such as lighting, public WiFi, air quality, surveillance and more can be run through our SmartSpots and SmartCloud platform, allowing control of a range of smart city services from a single dashboard.

The benefit to citizens and tourists alike will be a more streamlined and fair way to use regulated parking spots. Our on-site variable message signage will let motorists know exact bay availability before they even enter the car park, and our Smart Parking app will provide guidance at a higher level by allowing visitors to plan their entire journey.

Ben Williams, Smart Parking’s National Sales Manager, comments “We were delighted that Sunshine Coast decided to work with us. We are looking forward to embarking on Sunshine Coast Council’s smart city initiative with them, and bringing our SmartPark system to other parts of the area.”

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, our aim is 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 centres, 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.