Parking & Access Control

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has issued an immediate cease-and-desist demand to Monkey Parking, a mobile peer-to-peer bidding app that enables motorists to auction off the public parking spaces their vehicles occupy to nearby drivers. A letter issued by Herrera's office to Paolo Dobrowolny, CEO of the Rome, Italy-based tech start-up, cites a key provision of San Francisco's Police Code that specifically prohibits individuals and companies from buying, selling or leasing public on-street pa

Q-Free has added two new high performance products to its product portfolio, both with low power consumption and long life use. The OBU615 is a Dedicated Short-Range Communication-based (DSRC) on-board unit (OBU) for applications such as electronic toll collection (ETC) and congestion charging, automatic vehicle identification (AVI), electronic registration identification (ERI), access control and parking. The device uses the same in-vehicle mounting as he OBU610, reducing logistic and operational costs

Canterbury City Council in the UK has taken delivery of Parkeon’s first ParkREG with barriers system to be installed in the UK to replace ageing pay on foot technology, bringing a number of benefits, including pre-booking capability. ParkREG with barriers is an innovative parking payment and centralised management solution which integrates automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and barriers on entry/exit lanes with Astreo terminals. Canterbury uses numerous technologies to control its pa

Colin Sowman discovers how the latest systems can boost productivity and reduce conflict in parking enforcement. Parking enforcement is something of a ‘Cinderella’ service for local authorities: while necessary to keep the roads open and the traffic flowing, it is an expensive operation and can be loss-making. It is also labour intensive and parking enforcement officers are routinely verbally abused and sometimes physically attacked. Some authorities are now looking to automate parking enforcement in orde

Designed with some of the most challenging parking environments in mind, especially shopping centres and transport hubs, the WPS ParkAdvance system is built around a new IP-based operating system architecture that enables it to simply and directly connect with multiple technologies being deployed in car parks both now and in the future.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the US cities opting to use variable-rate parking to make it easier to find a parking space. Los Angeles is piloting LA Express Park, program covering a 4.5 square-mile area of downtown using technology to match on-street parking prices with demand. The objective is to ensure that between 10 and 30 per cent of the parking spaces on each block are open throughout the day. Smart meters and sensors compile occupancy and payment data and based on that information, a pr

Xerox and Holland Container Innovations (HCI) are the joint winners of the 2014 Promising Innovation in Transport Award, awarded by the International Transport Forum at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation for the transport sector with 54 member countries. Xerox receives the award for its Merge system, a city-wide sensor-based, smart parking solution that reduces traffic and congestion through guided parking with demand-based pricing. HCI receives the award for their 4FOLD ISO-certified foldabl

Ericsson has been chosen by Telefonica Vivo to integrate the smart parking and smart lighting for its digital city project in Aguas de Sao Pedro, Brazil. Collaborating with leading technology partners, Ericsson will be responsible for providing smart lighting and smart parking solutions and system integration. The design, installation and rollout of the project are all included in the scope of the agreement, as is responsibility for managed services, including operations and maintenance, once it has bee

UK company Green Gate Access Systems has installed the UK’s very first solar barriers at the entrance to a 350-space car park at Warwick Hospital. The two ‘up and down’ barriers are operated via a key code for known users, with a GSM interface linked to the hospital’s facilities office for visitors without a key code. The barriers are powered via 24V solar panels installed at each barrier, with an encoder safety device, underground induction sensor and infra-red beam, to ensure they do not come down on

Austrian traffic technology group Swarco has acquired the APT group of companies, creating one of the largest traffic and parking management systems businesses in Europe.