M-Parking: mobile commerce makes parking more profitable

At the Mobile Commerce World event in San Francisco today there was a great presentation about the effect of mobile technologies on parking management (it doesn’t sound too fascinating from the description I know, but bear with me). The case study was presented by the Assistant General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADT), Amir Sedadi, where they are implementing new and mobile forms of parking management - and seeing an increase in efficiency and revenue because of it.

It’s hard for people from outside of LA to appreciate just how chaotic the city is. Los Angeles is made up of over 450 square miles of interconnected smaller cities, with over 4 million inhabitants. For LADT, managing the income from parking is an administrative nightmare - but the amount of money to be made is huge. Parking is often referred to as the cash cow of a city. So how can mobile help?

First of all, the current parking meter system in LA is fairly archaic. The meters themselves were installed in the mid-90s. Each meter was a self-contatined unit that managed a single parking space - there are 40,000 of them! On top of that, all the different departments that use the meters have completely independent data systems. So the coin collecters, the meter maintainers and the Office of Parking Management don’t share any of their data at all. If a meter was broken, they had to wait for someone to complain before they could fix it. Speaking of complaints… they were rising steadily, while the operability of the system was going down. So in the mid-2000s, it was decided to upgrade the system. Between 2006 and 2007, there was an extensive period of research and recommendations. After field testing new technologies and systems gathered from all over the states, a pilot was approved for new system.

The new system was geared towards more advanced single-space meters, and the introduction of wireless parking sensors that would not only allow a single “pay station” to manage multiple spaces, but would also collect and share information with multiple systems. The advanced single-space meters accept both credit card payments and payments by mobile. Once you’ve registered your device with LADT, a single mobile call to the central system will allow you to put more money on your meter. The system will send out an SMS alert to warn you 10 minutes before your meter is about to run out - and because you’re registered by mobile, you can extend your time without having to return to the meter.

The most important lessons that the Department learned from the trial were: 1) the public really appreciates the ability to pay for parking by mobile 2) the biggest challenge to the system is making the public aware of it. Education isn’t an issue, as everyone knows how to use a mobile, but in LA they found it very hard to raise public awareness that a new system was actually in place!

The Department of the Transportation also found that wireless sensors integrated into the parking system saved a huge amount of time and money, and increased efficiency. Maintenance and repair crews receive automatic updates (by mobile!) when a meter stops working - combined with the additional payment options for customers, this saw revenue rise by 15% to 20% for the advanced meters.

Not only that, but it allows for more intelligent applications based on parking. A “city infrastructure technologies” company called Streetline is currently building iPhone apps based on information gained from parking meters. This will allow users to search for available parking throughout a city by generating a “heat map” showing which streets have the most available spaces. It’s also useful for parking management - the app can notify them in real-time of broken meters and parking violations.

At the moment, the total parking revenue brought in by mobile stations is tiny - less than 1%. But while the number of meters is still quite small, the revenue per meter looks great and operational problems have been very few. The biggest barrier is still slow adoption by citizens, making huge marketing and outreach campaigns a necessity.