The City of Santa Monica faced a challenge of out of date technology, old equipment and poor service at its prestigious garage locations around the city, while the demand to park vehicles and the traffic congestion were growing. Through a series of coordinated site evaluations and planning sessions, HUB Parking Technology was able to deliver a parking solution to meet their current and future needs.
Background
Santa Monica Parking Structure #6 occupies a prime downtown location adjacent to the popular Third Street Promenade, to which millions of visitors travel every year by car. Parking Structure #6 achieved LEED Gold certification and is the City’s most eco-friendly structure to date. It was also awarded as the Best Design of a Parking Facility with Fewer than 800 Spaces during the 2014 International Parking Institute Conference & Expo. The old structure was completely demolished and a new one was created in order to create a modern, sustainable and more convenient parking system. It consists of three subterranean and eight above-ground parking levels. It features 744 parking spaces (for a net increase of 400 spaces compared to the previous building), 30 electric vehicle charging stations, 80 kw of solar panels on the roof, space for up to 90 bicycles in racks and 19 motorcycles.
Parking Structure #6 is just the first of 14 parking facilities located in the City of Santa Monica which will be equipped with our brand new DATAPARK equipment by the end of August 2014. The total number of managed parking spaces consists of 8,683 and over 8 million cars park annually in these 14 facilities.
The project is divided into 2 phases: core functionalities will be deployed by the end of August and the second phase, that will provide license plate recognition functionality and the integration with the city bus fare collection system, will follow shortly.
Client Requirements
- The previous equipment was 13 years old and the City of Santa Monica wanted to adopt innovative and reliable solutions in their parking management.
- A critical objective of this project was to deliver a fully integrated online, real-time Parking System, accessible anytime and anywhere from any web-connected device via a Central Management System.
- Web-based operations: providing parking ticket validation via web based validation program, resulting in equipment free operation.
- Servers virtualization: utilization of virtual servers, providing scalability and greatly minimizing the risks of hardware failures and allowing for disaster recovery options.
- High speed and efficient installation in order to limit or eliminate disruption to parkers: Of the 14 different facilities, install one location per week from the end of May until the end of August.
- Convenient VMS signage to help customers find a parking spot quickly, minimizing congestion and reducing carbon emissions.
- Prevent tail gating: provide faster gates and an effective LPR solution (also to manage lost tickets).
- Special added functionalities: integration with local fare collection system for city buses (public transportation).
- Be energy-saving with low operating costs.
- Conveniently located automated Pay-on-Foot Pay Stations providing faster payment processing.
- Grant a seamless parking experience for users and save time for visitors to find a parking spot.
After a thorough due diligence and a competitive analysis, the City of Santa Monica selected HUB Parking Technology for this ambitious and innovative project. The pay-on-foot system is comprised of:
- 19 entry stations processing transient/monthly parkers
- 30 exit stations processing transient/monthly parkers
- 35 Automated Pay Stations (coins/bills/credit cards)
- 9 Credit Card Only Pay Stations
- 2 monthly only access controls
- 51 gates
- 2 fee computers
Result
The equipment will be connected to our web-based, cutting-edge software solution, Janus Management System, which is designed to improve and simplify the management of parking facilities. The system operates all 14 locations from one centralized control panel in the parking office.
All 14 locations are run with only 2 servers: 1 application and 1 database server. The server virtualization allows to increase business continuity and uptime, enable elastic capacity to provide system provisioning and deployment at a moment's notice, improve disaster recovery, reduce the data center footprint. Migrating physical servers over to virtual machines, means lowering monthly power and cooling costs in the data center.
Enhancements to the parking operation include License Plate Recognition, the possibility for customers to reserve and pre-pay for their parking, an increased level of automation with Pay-on-Foot machines and Pay-on- License Plate Recognition to improve the operational effectiveness. Minimized payment at the exits enhances traffic flow on egress. Credit Card payments increased and are now faster thanks to the new equipment (70% of all payments are made with credit cards).
Due to the reliability and speed of the new installed equipment, traffic flow throughput during busy periods has increased. The customer experience improved dramatically and the queues reduced. Management of the car park became easier and more efficient thanks to the new IT infrastructure installed by HUB Parking Technology.
HUB Parking Technology is also providing integration with the fare collection system for Santa Monica city buses – called Big Blue Buses. Customers will be able to pay for their parking and take the city bus with the same value card and easily add credit on fare cards using our DATAPARK Pay Station. This will improve convenience and enable fast transit flow by providing passengers with a variety of means to pay fares. In addition, the City of Santa Monica will be promoting increased public transit use by providing privileges to ride more on the bus and drive less. For example: take the bus 10 times, get one day of free parking within 30 days. Therefore, the new solution will be able to track usage on both bus ridership and parking usage.
About HUB Parking Technology
HUB Parking Technology is the FAAC Group Business Unit that develops, manufactures, installs and provides after-sales services for Parking Revenue Control Systems branded ZEAG, DATAPARK and FAAC. Through its local Group companies and distributors it is represented in all five continents and more specifically in North & South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
For more information about HUB Parking Technology, visit: www.hubparking.com
