Don’t miss PART III of the Smarter Parking Series: Addressing the Universal Pain of Parking
By Mark Braibanti, Director of Marketing at INRIX
Did you know drivers waste more than 55 hours every year looking for parking?[1] In fact, recent studies show that up to 30 percent of traffic in urban areas is a result of drivers circling the block in search of that elusive parking spot.[2] This figure doesn’t even account for the number of times drivers have abandoned their search for a parking space entirely. Finding parking can be very frustrating and is one of the biggest issues facing drivers, automakers, parking operators and municipalities alike.
Giving drivers widespread access to dynamic real-time information is key to easing this frustration. As the connected car continues to evolve, real-time parking information is becoming a staple of innovation and a necessary component to the overall driving experience. It's no longer enough to just get from point A to point B – drivers now want to know where, when and how to park.
We are now in an era of data-centricity, with complex technology and algorithms improving diagnostics and navigation in vehicles. Among the current technological innovations surfacing in the auto industry right now are what we call the ACES: Autonomous, Connected, Electric and Shared vehicles.
Autonomous cars are defined as vehicles capable of sensing their environments and navigating without human input, such as those being tested by Google, Tesla and Uber. They rely on connected car technology to safely drive themselves. Relatedly, connected cars are, as the title infers, connected to traffic and parking information via the cloud.
Connected cars provide a wide array of services for safety, navigation, convenience and entertainment. All of these services rely on analyzing large amounts of big data, so these cars are constantly collecting information which is gathered, analyzed, then shared out to other drivers through a large cloud distribution network.
Electric cars may be the oldest current trend, but these vehicles continue to increase in popularity and ownership.
Additionally, shared vehicles have recently taken off and are causing the auto industry, taxi industry, and the parking industry to rethink their business models. The millennial generation is showing a preference for using services like Uber and Lyft over car ownership. Ironically, this trend is actually pushing automakers towards creating better connected cars to compete.
By 2020, BI Intelligence estimates that 75 percent of cars shipped globally will be equipped with internet connectivity.[3] That equates to more than 250 million connected cars on the road in just four years. Compared with 25 million connected cars in 2015, this movement towards connected services represents a significant shift in technological needs for industries connected to the auto industry, including parking.
Connected cars are dramatically affecting how people park. The current parking experience is one of frustration, wasted time and often disappointment. Drivers are faced with inconsistent experiences across lots and cities, including complicated non-standardized rate structures, limited payment options, restricted zones, and the stress of spending more than 20 minutes on average trying to find a parking spot during peak hours.[4] Cities also suffer as uninformed drivers contribute to traffic congestion as they circle the block looking for spots.
Just as access to real-time traffic is now viewed as being a necessity, drivers in the near future will expect their in-car system to help them easily find the closest and cheapest available parking, compare parking prices, types, etc. and pay conveniently and seamlessly.
Many connected cars already offer parking information through their navigation systems, but dynamic parking information is currently one of the strongest developing trends in the connected auto industry. Drivers want to know more than where a parking lot is – they want to know if there are spots available in lots near their destination, in real-time.
Over the past 10 years, INRIX has been committed to improving urban mobility by providing drivers and transportation planners with real-time traffic insights. Realizing that parking plays a critical role in the navigation experience, INRIX acquired ParkMe, the leading provider of real-time parking information, to create a truly end-to-end experience for drivers. INRIX launched the industry’s first parking navigation service to provide real-time parking information in connected cars like Audi. In 2015, it launched the first integrated on-street parking solution in partnership with BMW. Since then, automakers including Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota have implemented INRIX Parking to help drivers save time, fuel and frustration. Developers have also begun to integrate dynamic parking information into their existing products. In September 2016, INRIX announced a new partnership with Waze to supply digital parking data to Waze's 50 million users across the globe, creating the largest distribution network for parking data in the world.
The technology used to determine occupancy levels instantaneously requires complex aggregation of a variety of data sources – from integrating with existing infrastructure such as smart parking instrumentation, to analyzing historical occupancy data, to collecting data directly from vehicles. For example, INRIX Parking has a portfolio of data gathered from a network of 300+ million vehicles and connected devices, gathering anonymous real-time insights from parking lot instrumentation, and collecting data from partners such as car manufacturers. By collecting, refining and analyzing all of this big data, INRIX can accurately predict where parking is available and incorporate the information directly into the car's navigation systems.
Connected vehicles transmit a wide range of data that can be collected and used to predict current parking availability on city streets and at off-street parking facilities. Cars equipped with LiDAR sensors, usually used to let you know if you are getting too close to objects in the road, can now be used to detect where open parking spaces are located as you drive.
For off-street parking, INRIX can tap directly into occupancy information from gates, loops, PARCS and pay stations and has partnerships with most of the leading equipment makers. INRIX then converts this massive amount of data into an easy-to-use format so it can be used by automakers, cities, government agencies and app developers.
For the development of on-street parking occupancy technology, driver-generated data such as vehicle location, speed and direction help create a reliable, real-time availability model. Using this model, INRIX processes a myriad of connected-car data points into individual, anonymized trips with distinct starting and ending points to understand vehicle location in relation to metered zones. Initial tests showed that this model achieved 80 percent accuracy when the zone size is optimized to capture as many arrivals and departures as possible, without capturing driving behavior unrelated to parking.
The addition of GPS navigation and city data further optimizes both the on-street and off-street parking experience for drivers of connected vehicles. They are routed in real-time to the location of available parking spaces and forewarned of any parking restriction for a given spot; ensuring drivers are not led to an inaccessible or illegal parking space.
As businesses and consumers alike increasingly transition to a variety of forms of digital payment, the auto industry is taking note and integrating the ability to pay for parking, both off-street and on-street, via vehicle's navigation dashboard. INRIX has partnered with Parkmobile to bring together availability, reservations and payments into a seamless, end-to-end parking experience for automakers.
Plus, the recent partnership with PayByPhone bolstered these capabilities by integrating PayByPhone's on-street parking data and payment options into INRIX's parking solution for the connected car. With payments available via smartphone and car from the two largest payment companies, drivers can easily handle parking transactions on-the-go.
According to analysts at Frost & Sullivan, the cost of searching for parking costs consumers and local economies nearly $600 million in wasted time and fuel every year.[5]
The connected car will impact every facet of transportation, parking and city planning. This makes connecting every component of the parking eco-system to cars an essential part of the path forward. If not, parking lots risk being invisible to drivers if they aren't integrated into the next generation of connected cars.
Much like how cities were unprepared for ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft, we cannot overlook the importance of connected cars. A new study conducted by the National League of Cities recently revealed that 94 percent of the world's cities are not prepared to deal with autonomous cars.[6] Cities and parking operators will soon begin to feel the impact of connected vehicles on their parking facilities. As an industry, we must embrace the connected car or we will miss out on a whole host of benefits, from increased revenue to optimized parking management and reduced congestion. Collaboration is the key to innovation, so we must all work together to be at the forefront of the connected car revolution to drive parking into the 21st century.
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[1] Strategic Analysis of Smart Parking Market in Europe and North America, Frost & Sullivan, April 2015.
[2] Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking, Chicago: Planners Press, 2005 and 2011.
[3] The Connected Car Report, BI Intelligence, June 2016.
[4] Strategic Analysis of Smart Parking Market in Europe and North America, Frost & Sullivan, April 2015.
[5] Strategic Analysis of Smart Parking Market in Europe and North America, Frost & Sullivan, April 2015.
[6] City of the Future, Technology & Mobility, National League of Cities Center for City Solutions and Applied Research, 2015.
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