With all the advances in the automotive industry that we’ve seen in the past decade, finding a parking spot is still as frustrating as ever. Today, we see how technology has reshaped completely the taxi sphere, and autonomous cars are no longer a science fiction, and just a matter of a few years.
Automation continues to be the greatest force in driving and reshaping our economy. And while we constantly hear about new exciting technology that will change transportation forever, it all seems just like a chatter when we are trying to find a parking spot in complete frustration.
The Emergence of IoT Smart Parking
If you would go to the shopping center in the Colombian city of Medellin, you could see a peculiar picture as if from the I Robot movie. There, once a driver leaves a car in a rather small garage, a special pallet takes a car from there to an unoccupied space, somewhere 20 stories above.
For the driver, it seems like a great solution, you can go about your business. However, for now, most parking happens outside those centers, on the streets, where you cannot implement such undoubtedly awesome technology.
Parking outside places like shopping centers and airports seems like something completely unorganized and outdated. In his interview with E&T, Yury Birchenko had this to say, regarding the current state of parking:
“Imagine a hotel chain that didn’t have real-time room occupancy data. And, can you imagine that hotel only accepting coins and notes for payment? The hotel would soon be out of business, yet this is how parking is still run today in many of the most advanced regions of the world”.[The future of car parking, by Len Williams]
In the same interview, he discussed the use of Big Data and dynamic pricing of parking, adjusting per demand, similarly to the car-sharing rates. “There are countless studies that show parking in today’s cities is a big problem”, but, “with the right data, these problems can be solved”. [The future of car parking, by Len Williams]
The NWAVE’s parking sensors system has already been implemented in cities across the UK and world. And with the latest additions in the technology, easily finding a vacant spot in the city and paying for it from a smartphone became a reality.
On top of simple driver convenience, LPWAN network can be used by municipalities to develop data-driven policies and adjust city-planning.
Parking Sensors is Only One Piece of the Puzzle
In the same article, E&T has interviewed other major figures from mobility and automotive industry, including Sarah-Jayne Williams, the director of smart mobility at Ford of Europe, Richard Allsop, professor of transport studies, and others.
They all agreed that as new technologies arrive at the consumer market, transportation will dramatically change in the next decade.
Another major force in the industry is car-sharing. In urban environments, the rate of car ownership has either been leveled or started to decline, as the sharing economy of transportation proved itself extremely convenient in metropolitan areas.
You can read the full article by Len Williams at https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/02/the-future-of-car-parking/.