by Rentcubo | Jul 1, 2021 | Parking Industry, Uncategorized
The New York Times reported that there are more than 2 billion parking spaces in the US alone and a third of these parking spaces are in parking lots. These asphalted parking lots are claimed to be hated by the people yet proliferate for their convenience. Research indicates that in the US there are eight parking spots built for every car and another research showed that parking lots cover more than a third of the total landmass of the US, which is the single biggest landscape feature of the built environment.
All of these figures denote an exponential growth of the parking industry over the past few decades. It is indeed taking over the mobility of the world by leaps and bounds. A decade or two ago, the parking industry functioned in a conventional method, which required a larger landmass as the number of vehicles grew. However, with the rise of technological innovations in the parking industry, it has adopted smart parking methodologies. The new and advanced smart parking helps optimize space utilization and help the parking industry transition to an eco-friendly industry.
Whether in the past or now, the parking industry is taking over the overall mobility of the world. Here are a few tenets on how specifically the parking industry is taking over the world’s mobility.
Unitronics, an Israel-based company holds about 50% share of the automated parking market in the US. The company’s automated stacking technology is claimed to eliminate the extra space that is otherwise needed for ramps and driveways. Automated stacking uses robots to store the vehicles in the most suitable parking slot allowing the cars to be parked as close as possible to each other. The elimination of drivers also allows for less energy consumption since it does not need lights and ventilations.
The automated stacking technology is efficient in a multi-story parking tower, but how about large open-air parking spaces like the ones in airports, out-of-town supermarkets, train stations, etc. Stanley Robotics, a French company is on a mission to put these kinds of space to better use with robotic valets. The company’s robot valets are already tried and deployed at airports in Paris and Lyon. Upon the arrival of the vehicle, the driver must leave the car at the designated area at the entrance of the terminal and the rest is taken care of by the robot valets. Stanley Robotics’ system is linked to the passengers’ air tickets; therefore, once the flight has landed the robot valet automatically picks the car and brings it to the entrance of the terminal.
These kinds of automated parking facilities are feasible for specially built parking lots; however, the most number of parking happens along the streets and outside small shops. This is where Internet of Things (IoT) enabled solutions to aid this parking problem. Nwave, a UK-based firm is one of the few IoT companies that is tackling the parking issues in open-access areas. The company has deployed thin sensors that can be laid into the road along the streets and these sensors can monitor the space above it and determine if that space is in use or not and send that information to the base station. These sensors can last up to 10 years and have a long range for communication purposes.
With a constant increase in the number of autonomous vehicles, autonomous parking is becoming an imperative option. Perpendicular parking has always been a tedious task for most people as it requires precision and care. However, Remote Smart Parking Assist (RSPA) technology that comes with an autonomous parking facility helps in efficient and fast parking of vehicles by eliminating the need for drivers. Regardless of whether it is an autonomous vehicle or not, autonomous parking facilities with the help of robots can autonomously park the cars into their designated slots. Autonomous parking helps time, space, and energy.
- Parking Management Software:
Software for parking management is a cloud-based service that is an all-important innovation in the parking industry. Parking management software has played an important role in the parking industry taking over mobility since it makes parking and parking management easy, quick, and accessible. The software for parking management can handle everything from booking a parking slot to processing payments. The feature-rich interface of parking management software can ably handle all aspects of parking and parking management.
By 2050, around 68% of the world’s population is expected to move into the urban environment, which implies the need for more parking space. While one of the options to meet the growing need for parking space is to build more multi-story parking spaces, the most feasible and efficient option is smart parking. With reference to smart parking facilities, RenCubo, a leading parking software and mobile app development company can offer you the best software and IT solution for your parking management business.
by Rentcubo | Jun 25, 2021 | Parking Industry
There is a lot riding on the parking industry as it helps mitigate parking problems and ease the traffic congestion the world over. Things can quickly get chaotic without a proper and efficient parking management system and people have begun to recognize the importance of good parking systems now, more than ever. The demand for parking spaces is always increasing due to the constant increase in the number of vehicles.
It is not possible to curb the increase in the number of vehicles; however, with a proficient parking management system, they can be monitored and managed efficiently. Parking management systems are also evolving just like any other business or industry. In addition, the integration of technology and parking management software in the parking management business is a revolutionary step.
The expectations of the people with regard to the parking industry are increasing due to the growth and innovative additions in the parking management business. Expectations are good for any business as they help the businesses to grow and reinvent themselves. However, the problem with expectations is that they tend to get unreasonable, impractical, and completely off-tracked from reality. The parking industry also faces similar unrealistic and idealistic expectations. So, what are the expectations that are contrary to reality?
- Convenient Parking Space: convenience is of utmost importance to everybody and unsurprisingly it is expected from the parking industry as well.
Expectation – people look to find a convenient parking space no matter where and when. Convenient parking spaces are usually the spots that are closer to the elevator, reduce the walking distance to and from the vehicle, have enough space around the vehicle, etc.
Reality – parking spaces are subject to several aspects such as availability, peak time, the landmass of the parking facility, etc. Finding an available parking spot itself is difficult, let alone a convenient one.
- Free Parking: freebies and free services have always had a massive response and high expectation rate from people.
Expectation – in most cases parking facilities are part of a revenue-generating setup such as shopping malls, corporate buildings, supermarkets, restaurants, etc. Therefore, people expect a free parking facility since they are investing in the business.
Reality – parking management facilities are difficult to manage and they use several technological aided equipment, automation solutions, parking management software, which are quite expensive. Therefore, a parking fee has to be levied in order to maintain, manage, and provide better parking solutions.
- Minimal Resources: if you were told that parking facilities do not require a lot of resources except for the land, you were misinformed.
Expectation – those who would like to get into the business of managing a parking facility expect to do so with minimal resources. This is mainly because of the wrong understanding of the parking industry at large.
Reality – the world is moving toward smart solutions and so is the parking industry. There are more technologically aided equipment and IT-enabled services and solutions that are necessary for a parking management business than one might think. Software for parking management, parking guidance systems, automated parking systems, hydroelectric vertical lifts, automated barriers, and billing dispensers are just a few of the resources you need.
- Large Landmass: the image of a parking lot that is conceived by the people is quintessentially large.
Expectation – the general idea of a parking lot is expectedly enormous. Business owners expect to acquire hectares of land to build and manage a sizable parking lot that can generate adequate revenue. This is because of the conventional parking model of vehicles being parked across the landmass.
Reality – parking management businesses have evolved to provide more parking space in less landmass. The innovations and smart parking systems have now enabled parking facilities to be built in the form of multi-story buildings and use multi-level stackers. These innovations allow more than 2 or 3 cars to be parked in a single car park space. Less is more!
- Copious Manpower: the common notion is business ownership and management is that the larger the business the more manpower it needs.
Expectation – parking management businesses and entrepreneurs expect to have copious manpower to manage the business in all its vastness. Imagine managing 100 cars at a time! One would expect to have the manpower that is at least 30% the size of the business.
Reality – industries and businesses across all industries are being automatized. The parking management business is also on the path to automation and adopting agile methodologies. The previously mentioned technologically aided equipment and IT-enabled services including the software for parking management reduce manpower as they are all an effort to automate the parking industry. In the current scenario, neither the parking management business nor the facility requires any manpower.
The integration of smart and agile methodologies in the parking industry is probably the best thing that has happened to parking management businesses in a long time. While all the other industries realized the necessity of technology sooner, technology was deemed to be an unnecessary luxury for the parking industry. However, tables have turned now and the parking industry is witnessing some of the best technological advancement even to the extent of providing fully automated parking facilities with robotic valets.
Therefore, both the users and the parking management business owners must make every effort to bridge the gap between parking expectations and reality. This will not only help parking management businesses to grow but to provide better parking solutions to the users and help the users capitalize on the advanced services of parking management businesses.
by Rentcubo | May 31, 2021 | Parking Industry
Quite often, most cities focus on traffic issues due to the menace of high levels of traffic congestion. People dread the thought of being stuck in traffic congestion since it has a tendency to get worse and may take several hours to clear. But what is more problematic than traffic congestion is the parking problem, which is hidden in plain sight as it is not considered to be as much of a problem.
When people consider the problems vehicles present, they tend to look at the vehicles in motion and overlook the vehicles at rest, but it is the latter that takes up more space, resources, and infrastructure than the former. Whether it is work, shopping, dining, watching a movie, hospital visits, or anything for the matter, the first thing that comes to mind is finding a parking spot, let alone a convenient one.
The consistent rise in the number of vehicles is the primary reason for parking issues in the majority of the cities and the lack of a proper parking management system has only added to the woes.
What Studies Say?
In numerous cities, real estate developers are required to provide a certain number of parking spaces in anything they build as mandatory parking minimums. Sadly, vehicles at rest are consuming a major part of our cities with oceans of asphalt covering them. Some analysts have revealed that Western Europe has in excess of 300 million parking spots and the United States boasts of over 2 billion parking spots.
The usage of these parking spots is a variable that is left unused for a minimum of a quarter of a day, while these many parking spots are still not enough during the peak hours. According to research, a standard single parking space measuring a little over 6*3 meters is equivalent to the space needed for a Parisian studio apartment, three office cubicles, or a low-income house in India.
The largest parking lot in the world is at the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, and it boasts of more than 20,000 parking spaces. The total landmass of West Edmonton Mall’s parking lot is as much space required to house a neighborhood of a minimum of 500 homes. This is one such example of wasted landmass for vehicles at rest and if we calculate all the landmass that is occupied by parking lots around the world, the figures would be mind-boggling. This is an example of a poor parking management system.
What is the Current Scenario?
With the rise in global living standards and accelerated urbanization, particularly in India and China, several cities across the globe have witnessed a massive spike in ownership of motor vehicles and thereby the demand for parking space. In India, the number of privately owned vehicles grew by a whopping 400% between 2001 and 2015, which is a growth from 55 million vehicles to 210 million vehicles. In 2017, China witnessed a shortage of 50 million parking spaces, as reported by the central government.
The impact of the rise in parking spaces and improper parking management system has been drastic since the covering of large landmasses with asphalt is directly resulting in deforestation, climate change, increased heat, etc., along with wasteful usage of the landmass. Unfortunately, cities are losing their battle to the rising need for more parking space, which, sooner or later, will result in fateful effects with regard to the environment, economic, housing, farming, etc.
How Can Parking Issues Be Solved?
First and foremost, we need to understand that the parking issue is a land-use problem. Next, we need to understand that building more parking lots is not the solution to parking issues. So, can this issue be fixed?
- Turn Parking Minimums to Parking Maximums – Every city has mandatory parking minimums, but what about parking maximums? Very seldom do the people, corporations, government, etc., think about mandating parking maximums. Conversion of parking minimums to parking maximums is one of the strong points of a good parking management system.
- Implementation of Parking Management Software – This is perhaps one the best ways to curb the need for more parking space as it allows the users to book their parking spot anywhere for a set duration. The users will have the freedom to check the availability of parking spots, book it, and pay for it. Prepaid parking spots will also help mitigate the overuse of a parking spot by a user as it will attract a penalty. Parking management software also ensures hassle-free and smooth flow of traffic.
- Better Infrastructure – Research has revealed that in the city of Mexico, 250,000 parking spaces were built at 10,000 USD per parking space between 2009 and 2013, which could have been used to build 18 lines of rapid bus transit that is capable of moving more than three million people a day. In short, the money funded to build parking spaces could have been used to build better transport infrastructure, which will eventually reduce the need for more parking spaces.
- Dynamic Parking Fee – This is also a subdivision of the implementation of parking management software. A dynamic parking fee system will change the parking fee by assessing the demand for parking space. In short, more demand for parking space means a costlier parking fee. This will directly reduce the demand for parking space and ensure fewer vehicles resting at public places.
- Vertical/multi-story Parking Lots – Parking lots spread out over a large landmass is always preferred over multi-storey parking lots for convenience purposes. However, in this case, it is necessary for real estate developers and the government to prioritize the proper use of landmass over convenience.
It is now or never, the majority of the cities have already lost about 40% of their landmass to parking lots, which is more than housing units. Going at this pace we are bound to lose more landmass than ever to parking lots, which are essentially idle spaces. It is the responsibility of the authorities as well as the people to be mindful of the landmass we have already lost and mitigate the further wastage of landmass through parking spaces. RentPark can help develop the most intuitive and dynamic parking management software to ensure a resourceful parking management system.
by Rentcubo | Apr 19, 2021 | Parking Industry, Success Story
The increasing demand for parking spaces, smart parking services, and other technology-based parking facilities have resulted in the remarkable growth of the parking industry. There are a few global leaders in the parking industry who are instrumental in revolutionizing the parking industry. However, these companies did not start as global leaders, rather had humble beginnings who grew up to become global leaders with hard work, grit, determination, and commitment.
These global leaders, in the process, have put together well-knit success stories. In this blog, we have collated the success stories of some of the global leaders in the parking industry. Aspiring business enterprises who are looking to carve a niche for themselves in the parking industry can take inspiration from the following success stories. While the path may be the same as the leading companies, each business enterprise must define its own journey to success.
T2 Systems:
The company was founded in 1994 with a single goal i.e., to make parking better. Since its founding, the company has been a technology-based parking systems and services provider and has been deep-rooted in the evolution of the parking industry. T2 Systems began to integrate technology while the parking industry was still in a nascent state, which helped the company to provide seamless parking management, mobility, and transportation services.
It was this pioneering initiative that helped T2 Systems to establish a leadership position in the parking industry sooner than expected. Today, the company provides the most comprehensive solutions to manage transactions and leverage data to make informed decisions for efficient parking management. The company also has a strong track record of developing and deploying parking projects that generate high levels of revenue for the clients.
Cleverciti Systems:
Having founded in 2012, Cleverciti Systems is headquartered in Munich, Germany. The company was founded by Thomas Hohenacker and Korad Prinz-Dreher with a broad vision to elucidate and modernize parking systems. They aimed to achieve their goal with intelligent, ready-to-deploy integrated sensor systems that are designed to reduce traffic and environmental effect, solve parking searches, and comprehensively ease parking management.
From where it began in 2012, Cleverciti Systems now has 15 business verticals, 8 parking solutions, and 7 innovations in the parking industry. In 2017, EIT Digital named Cleverciti Systems as the best digital cities scale-up in all of Europe. Now, the company is the global leader in hi-tech and comprehensive solutions for outdoor and on-street parking services such as parking spot detection, monitoring, and guidance.
SKIDATA:
Gunther Walcher was the first person to develop printed ski tickets and a cash register for ski resorts, which marked the founding of SKIDATA in 1977. Two years later that company introduced the next generation cash register and coder 320 helping ease the sales of tickets. Later, in 1985 SKIDATA ventured into the parking management business and achieved its first success by equipping Apcoa parking facility in Vienna. Two years after its venture into parking systems, SKIDATA developed touch-free ski tickets by integrating RFID technology.
A few decades down the line SKIDATA impressed the world with its intuitively designed and highly functional access control equipment such as the Power.Gate, Lite.Gate, and Barrier.Gate in 2014. In the following years, the company began to garner awards and accolades in all its business avenues. Now, the company has more than 10,000 installations in more than 100 countries across the globe, and has more than 50,000 patents.
Robotic Parking Systems:
The US-based company was founded in 1994 and has been a pioneer in the development of a high-capacity and scalable automated parking garage. Robotic Parking Systems has reduced the required parking space by over 50%, which is a remarkable achievement. The company’s patented technology allows for speed and efficiency in parking management systems and has created opportunities for projects that require hundreds or even thousands of parking spaces to immensely benefit from the space-saving, safety, and environmental benefits.
With 26 years of rich experience in the automated parking system, the company has gone on to win two Guinness World Records for the Largest Automated Parking Facility in the world; one in 2013 and the other in 2018. Since its founding in 1994, the company has been responsible for many “industry firsts” in the automated parking industry such as:
- The first one to coin the term “Robotic Parking”
- The first one to build the first automated parking systems in the USA as well as the Middle East.
- The first one to build and deploy simultaneously operating robots for parking with independent three-axis motions.
- The first one to hold a Guinness World Record for “Largest Automated Parking Facility”, that too not just once but twice.
- The first one to build and deploy an original robotic parking and not a copy of someone else’s technology.
- The first one to be certified as the parking management company with the highest peak throughput in the industry.
SWARCO:
The Austrian company SWARCO was founded by Manfred Swarovski in 1969. SWARCO was initially founded as a glass bead factory, which was transformed into a world-leading company that provides products, systems, services, and turnkey solutions that offer safe and convenient traveling for all people on the move. Manfred Swarovski was enthusiastically spirited to live agile, innovate, trustfully cooperate and never hesitate to go the extra mile.
Now, the company is headquartered in Wattens, Austria, and has an international network of production facilities, offices, and business partners across the globe and on all continents. What was once started as a glass bead factory now offers one of the most comprehensive solutions for road marking, urban traffic management, signage, highway and tunnel management, parking, and public transport. In addition, SWARCO also helps connect vehicles with the road infrastructure, set up charging infrastructure, and offer holistic and modular solutions with value-added services that support the future of mobility and make city life convenient.
SIEMENS:
Having been founded in 1847, SIEMENS is one of the oldest companies in this list of leading parking management companies with more than 150 years of operations. SIEMENS was originally and still primarily is an electrification, automation, and digitalization company. It is also one of the world leaders in building energy-efficient and resource-saving technologies. The company has explored all possible avenues in the fields of electrification, automation, and digitalization resulting in a wide range of products and services including mobility.
SIEMENS is now a global powerhouse and generated a revenue of a whopping $97.4 billion for the financial year of 2020. It currently has a manpower of 385,000 the world over. Starting from 2005, the company has been honored with more than 100s of diversity-related awards across the globe. SIEMENS has an incredibly wide range of products, services, and turnkey solutions to offer such as:
- Infrastructure and Energy Solutions
- Automation
- Software for Industries
- Medical Diagnosis
- B2B Financial Solutions
- Rail Automation
- Wind Power Solutions
- Mobility and Parking Systems etc.
In the mobility and parking systems segment, SIEMENS offers one of the best parking management systems with its Intelligent Parking Solutions. This innovative parking solution uses the full potential of digitalization such as intelligent software, smart sensors, and intuitive analysis of the data. SIEMENS’ Intelligent Parking Solutions helps eliminate superfluous parking-related problems and optimize the use of urban parking facilities.
The company has also introduced a parking bay sensor, which uses ultra-low-power microwave-radar detecting technology. SIEMENS’ parking bay sensors are used to detect and record the start and end times of the parked vehicles.
FLOWBIRD:
The leading intelligent transportation and smart city solutions company was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in Paris, France. As the name FLOWBIRD suggests, the company was inspired by the effortlessness with which birds move within a cloud of birds in a quick and safe manner. Inspired by the free movement of the birds the company aims to make individual travel simple, safe, and fast while maximizing the efficiency of the collective travel by harmonizing the flow.
FLOWBIRD has been able to achieve its goal and provide better parking management systems for more than 40 years through various solutions such as kiosks, mobile payments, global connect technology, automatic fare collection, congestion reduction strategies, real-time data management, etc. FLOWBIRD has helped reduce air pollution, simplify payments, optimize traffic, and make cities economically dynamic and secure and thereby improve the living environment of more than 100 million users. The company also provides software that helps the local authorities to assess, supervise, and manage mobility within the city.
The parking industry, for the most part, has been unfortunately mistaken to be a low-income generating or less-thriving business. The success stories of these global leaders have proved wrong the misconceptions about the parking industry. Who would have thought that the parking industry had and still has such enormous scope to grow and evolve? Truth be told, given the largeness of the parking industry, it does provide a great scope and these conglomerates are an example of how much the parking industry has in store for aspiring business enterprises. Are you looking to make it big in the parking industry? Read through the success stories of these global leaders in the parking industry and draw inspiration to become one yourself.
