SWARCO Advanced Parking Guidance System Now Open at Houston Hobby Airport

SWARCO TRAFFIC AMERICAS’ Advanced Parking Guidance System (PGS) partially opened at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas in time for the 2015 Holiday Season.

Construction of the new multilevel garage, which began in 2014, was accelerated at the request of Houston Airport Systems to open 600 parking spaces in the new garage before the 2015 Thanksgiving Holiday. SWARCO collaborated with SpawGlass Contractors Inc., the general contractor, to achieve this aggressive schedule.

Please click on this link to see news clip from a Houston news station: New Hobby Airport parking garage to help ease holiday travel!

The PGS employs single space sensors in conjunction with indoor/outdoor LED variable message signs (VMS) to detect, report and display available parking information in real time. Over 4500 state-of-the-art ultrasonic sensors installed over each space detect vehicles as they park. These sensors then report individual occupancy status to a companion LED space indicator light that illuminates red when the space is occupied or green when vacant. Over 100 VMS use the space counts collected from these sensors to report parking availability to the drivers both as they approach the garage and once inside the structures. To park more quickly and efficiently, travelers simply “drive for the green light.” This saves time as well as reduces stress and carbon emissions. In other words, the ultimate in customer service.

The new multilevel garage features SWARCO’s sleek embedded sensor design. 2500 sensors were embedded in the ceiling above each parking space during construction to conceal all conduit and cabling. This embedded sensor design, the first of its kind in America, is the slimmest and most low key on the market today. In fact the sensor is so small, drivers probably won’t even notice them. What is noticeable however is the corresponding LED space light featuring a 360° viewing angle and RGB multicolor LEDs capable of displaying any number of colors. This allows each parking category (e.g. handicapped, electric vehicle charging, reserved, valet, etc.) to have their own unique color. A click of the mouse is all that is required to change the space category and color in response to operational requirements.

SWARCO TRAFFIC AMERICAS is proud to partner with SpawGlass Contractors Inc, to deliver Houston Hobby International Airport a truly unique Parking Guidance Solution. The new system is sure to make parking easy and worry-free for the 1.6 million new travelers expected to use Hobby’s brand new terminal annually.

About SWARCO

SWARCO – the Austrian-based traffic technology corporation of Tyrolean entrepreneur Manfred Swarovski – is an international group providing the complete range of products, systems, services and solutions for road safety and intelligent traffic management. With almost five decades of experience in the industry, SWARCO supports the growing mobility needs of society with turnkey systems and solutions in road marking, urban and interurban traffic control, parking, public transport, detection, infomobility and energy-efficient, LED-based signaling and lighting technology. The Group consists of roughly 80 companies in 24 countries with a total staff of almost 2700 employees and annual revenues of almost half a billion Euro.