Smart Parking System

As cities deal with rising populations and increasing traffic, a smart parking system can help to relieve congestion, reduce driver frustration and boost city revenues.

Smart parking systems use sensors, cameras and analytics to identify open parking spaces, communicating information to drivers via digital signage, mobile apps and vehicle infotainment systems. Rather than endlessly circling city blocks to find an open space, drivers can quickly and effortlessly locate a spot and be on their way on foot. Cities can also use a smart parking system to improve enforcement by collecting real-time information about violations.

Beyond making parking easier for drivers, smart parking systems offer a wide range of benefits for cities:

• Greater revenue for cities. By turning over parking spaces more quickly, enhancing enforcement and incorporating dynamic pricing – where the cost of a parking space may vary by location, time of day and demand – cities can significantly increase parking revenues.
• Less traffic congestion. When drivers can find parking more easily, city streets are less clogged with vehicles, allowing traffic and emergency response vehicles to move more freely.
• Lower carbon footprint. By minimizing the time drivers spend looking for parking, smart parking can reduce greenhouse gases and pollutants emitted from vehicles.
• Heightened reputation. A smart parking system that includes smart parking garages and airport smart parking enhances a city’s reputation as a forward-thinking urban area, attracting more new tourists, residents and employers.
• More economic opportunities. Easier city parking translates into more local business, as drivers can spend more time patronizing local businesses.
• Easier payment options. Smart parking meters enable cashless transactions – where drivers can pay via mobile apps – simplifying parking for drivers and reducing the city’s cost of collecting coins from individual meters.

Smart parking system technology

A smart parking system is built with technology components that are similar to all smart city technology.

• Sensors and cameras provide data on where open parking spaces exist.
• Smart parking IoT edge devices aggregate data from multiple spots.
• Network connections transport data between sensors and edge devices and from edge devices to analytics platforms.
• Data analytics software transforms raw data into information about the availability of spaces for drivers and about violations, utilization rates and other intelligence for city parking managers.
• User interfaces such as dashboards, mobile apps, digital signage and vehicle-integrated navigation applications communicate parking information to drivers and city officials.

To manage the tremendous amount of data produced by thousands or millions of sensors in a smart parking system, cities need robust, reliable and scalable connectivity and transport networks. High performance and low latency is key – any network delays or failures can cause significant parking problems. Additionally, smart parking systems use a combination of connectivity protocols, including wireless, cellular and wired, requiring networks that offer a diversity of connectivity options.

Building a smart parking system with Spectrum Enterprise

Spectrum Enterprise is a trusted partner to smart cities throughout the U.S., providing the high-performance network and diversity of connectivity that smart parking solutions require. Spectrum has more than 840,000 miles of fiber network infrastructure in place today and will add an additional $25 billion of infrastructure by 2021 to increase capacity and improve capabilities.

To support smart city parking and other smart technologies, Spectrum Enterprise offers:

• A two-way, fully interactive digital network that delivers speeds of up to 100 Gbps for government and enterprise clients.
• One of the largest LTE cellular networks in the nation – Spectrum Mobile.
• More than 350,000 WiFi hotspots throughout the country that will soon be capable of connection speeds up to 1 Gbps wirelessly.
• Gigabit Internet connectivity for homes and businesses in the Spectrum service footprint.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.