Survision: Ticketless Parking - Much More Than Parking Without Paper Tickets

Ticketless parking is a Parking system in which drivers do not need to take a physical ticket when they enter a parking lot; this can be achieved by either using RFID stickers, phone barcode scanning, bluetooth or License Plate Recognition (LPR). This can make the parking process more efficient and convenient for drivers.

Since it works by reading something already present on the vehicle (the license plate), LPR has easily overcome other methods, so we will talk about LPR-based Ticketless Parking from now on.

LPR-based Ticketless Parking uses License Plates to identify vehicles, link them with other data (payment status, time and place, etc.) and then activate (or not) further physical or digital actions (opening the gate, sending notifications, etc.).

In Ticketless Parking, you’ll see the gate lift as soon as you approach the entry, no tickets to pick up and no stops of any kind; then, when you are up to leave, one of two things happen:  1 If you paid your stay in advance, the barrier will let you out, even without slowing down!; 2 If you are in a Parking with digital payment at the exit, you’ll stop only the time it takes you to show your phone or card. 

The whole process takes up to 4 seconds in Parking systems with barriers and less than 1 second in Free Flow Parking systems.

Free Flow Ticketless Parking, a step beyond

Beyond the elimination of the ticket machine, the same technology that allows Ticketless Parking also allows the gateless feature, yes! no barrier at all!: Users come in, pay and come out easy, fast, and fluently; LPR does the rest! This method is becoming increasingly popular, representing even more advantages and revenue.

And what about the “gone without payment” concern? Well, depending on the region, LPR also allows parking operators to register the License Plate to directly issue fines or report felony violations to the authorities.

Advantages of Ticketless Parking

Those seconds spared and the comfort of eliminating paper tickets is "small potatoes" compared to the vast potential of completely digitalizing the whole parking operation using ticketless parking systems; again, it may seem minor when considering a few vehicles, but when talking about hundreds or thousands per day, the picture starts to look promising:

• Traffic flow improvement: the faster the cars get out, the more free spaces = more reliability
• Online payment options for customers: Digitally managed data allows connection with digital payment platforms
• Reservations: Clients could book and pay for their stay in advance
• Tickets-related cost saving: No more printing machines, no more ink, no more wasting paper!
• Lost ticket inconveniences elimination: Complications and scams related to lost tickets are gone forever. 
• Eco-Friendly: Reduces air pollution as moving vehicles stay less time inside the Parking areas
• Security improvement: Your system will know “who and when” entered or exited your parking facility at all times.
• Contactless: In ticketless parking systems, there is absolutely no need to touch anything, which helps lower health and safety concerns.

The privacy concern of Ticketless Parking

The first thing you should know is that license plates and other data such as fees, times/dates of entry, and exit are not considered personal data; keeping that in mind, it's good to know that parking databases don’t collect personal information. Your privacy is secure.

Legoland New York is one of many businesses that realize parking service must already be ticketless, gateless, and frictionless.

So, What is needed to make your Parking ticketless?

Instead of ticket machines and payment booths, you will need Triggers to activate the LPR cameras. They then read the vehicle's plates as they pass and send the data to the LPR server, which converts the images or videos into digital data to be used by the Parking application.

Also a Pay machine located at the exit or any other point in your facility is necessary; of course, all this has to work over Network Infrastructure and with Enough space for cameras to read the plate adequately ( this is a big deal in the US since only rear plates are required).

At this point, ticketless seems expensive since it needs extra hardware and space to run; you would have to weigh the cost/benefit balance very tightly.

But this is not the end of the story! There is a way out of this challenging dilemma, and it´s related to the cameras themselves.

Instead of regular cameras, you could use All-included LPR cameras, which are capable of performing the LPR process by themselves (eliminating LPR servers), capturing the plates by themselves (eliminating the triggers) and being precise enough to read plates as close as 5 ft.

This Changes Everything.

These cameras clearly tip the balance in favor of ticketless, and this is where Survision LPR cameras strongly come into play. They have always been designed for intelligent parking systems, keeping the most critical parking challenges in mind and sparing the highest LPR-related costs, such as infrastructure changes, LPR servers and triggers.

Going ticketless is the future of Parking; using Survision LPR cameras may be the smart move to make it real. 

LPR/ANPR cameras for Ticketless Parking

Micropark	Nanopak
High performance LPR camera for the most challenging sites such as very short distances and open angles.	More affordable, smaller yet very fast and precise LPR camera, ideal for barrier or totem embedding.

About SURVISION 

SURVISION is a global leader in License Plate Reading (LPR). Since 2001, with solutions being deployed in over 50 countries with more than 50,000 cameras thanks to a network of 900 Value Added Integrators. The quality of its R&D team allows SURVISION to work with world-class integrators for a complete set of innovative solutions for Smart-City, Smart-Parking, law enforcement, toll road collection, car-park management, and for local authorities.