Optimizing Your City’s Parking is a Must
Every city in America has cars, and every car needs a parking space.
Parking facilitates the needs of 100M+ commuters across the United States, making it one of the most important urban mobility infrastructures. Optimizing your city’s parking processes is key to improving the experiences of residents and increasing parking revenue.
Creating the best environment for parking city-wide is a large challenge, however. Today, city curbs are crowded, with demand for curbside parking from cars, rideshares, taxis, and other vehicles – outstripping supply. The curb is a scarce, in-demand asset and should be treated as such.
With ineffective policies, the supply and demand imbalance can result in chaos, creating congestion, unsafe conditions, excess emissions, inequity, and inefficiencies. With six steps however, your city can create “SUPEERior Streets,” making your city a safer and more welcoming place for every resident.
What Does “SUPEERior Streets” Mean?
“SUPEERior Streets” isn’t just superior streets spelled funny; it is an acronym standing for Safe, Uncongested, Productive, Environmentally Friendly, Equitable, and Revenue Optimized. Curbsides where demand exceeds supply often result in unsafe conditions. Coupled with congestion (30 percent to 60 percent of all urban traffic is caused by drivers looking for parking), curbsides can be dangerous.
To address safety and reduce congestion, consider implementing wayfinding signage and strategies to free up curb space. These measures can significantly enhance the productivity of your streets, making your city a more attractive and better place to live. But cities also need to balance the needs of various stakeholders to ensure parking remains an equitable and accessible resource.
An effective parking policy also cuts emissions by reducing the number of cars searching for a parking space and incentivizing more eco-friendly alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles.
Revenue optimization is the last piece of the puzzle. Curbs and parking spaces are scarce and should be priced appropriately. With the proper parking policy implemented, your city’s residents can be happier, and the city can make money to fund other projects.
Step 1— Define What Success Means
When choosing to overhaul parking in your city, you should first think deeply about what parking success looks like for your city. What is your ultimate goal, and how do you know when you’ve reached it?
Having a goal in mind and making it measurable – with metrics such as weekly parking revenue, visitor satisfaction rating, average parking occupancy level, etc. – makes planning that much easier.
Step 2— Understand Key Levers
To implement a successful parking plan, you must understand what “knobs” to turn and “levers” to pull to bring about city-wide changes. Discuss and question the current parking rules, the prices for parking, rule visibility for parkers, alternatives, incentives for desired parker behavior, and rule enforcement. Ask, “What can I change?” and “How should I adjust each lever to achieve city parking optimization?”
Step 3— Identify Data Sources
Making informed decisions that have a basis in real-world parking data can make the difference between a successful parking strategy and a failed one. Make the best use of data generated from online parking pass purchases, machine transactions from various parking assets, and manually compiled info from parking operators in the field.
Step 4— Implement a System
To make the best use of your collected data, you should implement a smart parking system. A system can generate and analyze business intelligence data to help you make decisions automatically. ParkHub has parking data analytics solutions and the know-how to help make your city a better place to live.
Step 5— Hypothesize, Test, and Iterate
No matter how much you plan, your new system won’t be perfect the first go-round. The easiest way to perfect your parking system is to try it out to see if it’s helping you achieve your goals.
Enact changes, test different things, and document your results, measuring what happens when different levers are pulled. After testing your plan in the field, you can determine what works and what doesn’t.
Step 6— Communicate Your Key Findings
Having all the answers in your hands can be useless if the answers don’t go to the right people. Communicate your findings to policymakers and people who can implement what works best for your city. The key is organizing your collected data and knowing how to use it to make lasting improvements for your municipality.
Need Help Making It Happen?
Just as no one person is responsible for the success of a city, know that you don’t have to make improvements all on your own. Book a demo today with ParkHub to speak to a parking expert and see how we can help you better serve your community.