Passage du stationnement payant aux parcmètres multiespaces

Systèmes de gestion du stationnement antérieurs - stationnement payant et payant

When Aspen, Colorado adopted the first Pay-and-Display system for on-street parking in the United States in the mid-90s, local merchants were outraged.  Business owners and many of the thousands of commuting employees staged a “honk in” to protest the city’s decision to change from time-restricted, free parking to some unusual form of pay parking from Europe called Pay-and-Display.  But the complaints were not about having to display a receipt on the dashboard, or having to walk back to your vehicle in the snow.  The complaint was about change, and fear that customers of this vibrant, upscale business community would not accept such a drastic change.

Months later the pain was mostly over and most business owners were thankful for the newly-created turnover of prime parking spaces which previously were occupied all day with non-paying employees of local restaurants, shops and lodging facilities.  The city was touting higher sales tax revenues, further showing that the implementation of pay parking was good for business, plus its mostly-empty city parking garage soon had a waiting list of local employees looking for an off-street, affordable alternative for parking.  Within the next decade, hundreds of cities in the US followed the Aspen model, from New York City to Chicago to Seattle and many smaller cities in between.  The benefits of being able to offer a credit card payment over the old coin-only style meters and the efficiency of having one meter manage 10 spaces instead of just one space were apparent.  Customers learned to accept that parking was a 3 step process: park, pay, and display.  Enforcement by foot, with sharp-eyed PEOs peering into every windshield could now spot an expired receipt or a vehicle with no receipt displayed from half a block away.

Améliorer l'expérience : Avantages du paiement par plaque par rapport au stationnement payant

"Pittsburgh était désormais une ville de stationnement de classe mondiale, et d'autres villes américaines l'ont remarqué. De nombreuses demandes de propositions pour des parcmètres multiespaces en 2012 demandent que le paiement à la plaque soit au moins une option, si ce n'est le mode de fonctionnement principal."

In 2012, the City of Pittsburgh became the first US city to implement an on-street Pay-by-Plate system on a large scale, following similar, successful models created in Calgary and Amsterdam.  The leap from mostly coin-only single space meters to a license plate based system with one kiosk per block face was equal in boldness to the Aspen leap in the 90s, and was only possible by the advances in integrated technologies for wireless communications and real-time database for parking payments and enforcement. Similar to the Aspen success with Pay-and-Display, it only took a few months for business owners and customers to sing the praises of the new system.  But in the Pittsburgh case, the benefits not only included the ability to pay with a credit card, but customers could pay at any pay station in the system and did not have to walk back to their vehicle to display a receipt.  In fact, the receipt was now optional and not required for compliance.  Enforcement efficiencies from checking plate numbers against the real-time payment database were enormous and much faster than brushing off snow from windshields to find a paid receipt.Pittsburgh was now a world-class parking city, and other US cities took notice.  Many of the requests for proposals for multi-space parking meters in 2012 ask for Pay-by-Plate at least as an option, if not the primary mode of operation.  One of the main questions that cities are starting to now ask is how do we seamlessly transition from Pay-and-Display to Pay-by-Plate from both the customer and enforcement perspective?  The key lessons learned from the Pittsburgh project included the need to educate the customer and condition them to know their plate number.  How many people have their license plate number memorized?  Not many, and add in the fact that people drive multiple vehicles, rental vehicles and fleet vehicles, and the challenge grows.  Additionally, the enforcement team needed to learn to trust the online payment status database.There is a unique, interim blend of both Pay-and-Display and Pay-by-Plate parking that allows for a painless transition from one system to the other.  Many of the Pay-by-Plate kiosks can operate in Pay-and-Display mode, but with the ability for customer to enter their plate number.  While this adds a step for the customer, it begins to condition the customer to expect to have their plate number as part of the parking transaction. From the city perspective, the plate number can now be printed on the parking receipt.  This means that the Pay-and-Display receipt is now only valid for one vehicle, and excess time purchased cannot be given to another customer.  Suddenly, this hybrid form of Pay-and-Display with Plate Entry requirement, moves the consumer and enforcement staff in the direction of focusing on the plate number for compliance while immediately increasing parking revenues through elimination of customers sharing receipts.

Méthodes de contrôle avancées - logiciel de reconnaissance des plaques d'immatriculation

Eventually, the enforcement system can begin to work with wireless handheld devices and license plate recognition (automatic number plate recognition) camera technology (LPR) to verify compliance without even checking the receipt, gradually building trust in the new technology by confirming that the live, online data matches what is displayed on the receipt.  This will naturally lead to the receipt being optional for compliance and a full transition to a plate-based on-street parking system.

Une fois qu'une plaque d'immatriculation a été saisie dans le système de stationnement, elle devient une forme d'identification ou un code-barres auquel l'activité du véhicule peut être liée pendant le processus d'application. Les agents de contrôle du stationnement conduisent des véhicules de patrouille équipés de caméras de reconnaissance des plaques d'immatriculation, ou de reconnaissance automatique des plaques minéralogiques, pour scanner les plaques des véhicules garés à une vitesse pouvant atteindre 50 scans par minute. Les informations de la plaque sont transmises à une base de données qui vérifie la validité de la session de stationnement, les infractions, etc. Si une session de stationnement expire, une alerte en temps réel est envoyée à l'agent chargé de l'application des règles de stationnement, qui peut signifier une citation sur place ou utiliser les coordonnées GPS pour envoyer à pied l'agent le plus proche. La plaque scannée, à l'instar d'un code-barres, permet d'accéder instantanément aux informations relatives au véhicule, indépendamment des vérifications visuelles ou des frappes au clavier requises par l'ancien système de stationnement. Enfin, ce type de transition permet également aux villes d'intégrer facilement les dernières technologies de permis virtuels et les options de paiement, y compris le paiement par téléphone, où les permis et les paiements sont également liés au numéro de plaque du véhicule et appliqués par le biais d'une base de données centrale en temps réel au lieu de regarder visuellement un reçu ou un permis imprimé.Téléchargez notre livre blanc pour découvrir comment vous pouvez passer en douceur à un système de paiement par plaque !