Parkenplatz

The pilot is on the speaker joking that Greenland is covered in ice, while Iceland is covered in green.

As I write this I’m on the plane returning to Toronto from the World Parking Symposium V in Stuttgart, Germany.

I’m looking at the seat occupancy. According to the seat-pocket magazine this Airbus 330 has a seat capacity of 274. A brief headcount from here indicates a load level that has to be around 85%.  Did I ever mention that airplane seating is just like parking spaces? Think of the plane as a parking lot for human butts: there’s a fixed-supply of seats and every time a seat files empty it doesn’t generate any revenue. And the airline is a master of varying pricing to control demand – charging less for early purchase, and significantly more for a First Class butt.

I can only afford an Economy Class butt.

Butt I digress…

You may not be aware of the World Parking Symposium. It’s kind of hard to describe. In fact, it’s easier to tell you what it’s not.

It’s not big. Only about 50 people convened this year (representing something like 20 different countries). Notably this is a weaker showing than previous years but still plenty sufficient to provide a broad perspective of global parking concerns.

It’s also not commercial. The content is extremely academic. It’s a true think-tank type of environment, and even though vendor sponsorship still makes up a big chunk of the funding for the event so far they’ve managed to keep the commercial sale-pitches to a minimum.

Also the participants are not looking to solve today’s parking issues… Instead the approach is much more strategic, looking forward 3 or 5 or 20 years out. They ask questions like:

• “Is society’s marriage to the automobile really a bad thing?”
• “Are world demographics trending toward a return to public transportation?”
• “Can the psychological profile of a scofflaw be impacted by parking policy?”
• “Which way to the hotel bar?”

Finally, it’s not stressful. Sessions start at 9am, give or take a few minutes. It’s a discussion rather than a lecture. There’s lots of debate (sometimes heated!) but always with the utmost respect for colleagues.

So in contrast to the large-scale, multi-threaded, heavily structured conferences like the IPI or NPA or PIE, this one feels less like rushing to a meeting and more like strolling through the park.

Incidentally, this was my first trip to Germany. I managed to navigate the local S-bahn trains in Frankfurt and Stuttgart and also the Inter-City Express train between these cities. Having a reliable infrastructure of alternative transportation definitely reduces the demand for parking in some areas. I think that anyone parking operation with a similar alternative transportation infrastructure in place (train, bus, subway, etc) has the option of using this to impact localized parker behavior.

I also added an extra day to sight-see while examining parking in downtown, residential, campus and rural locations.  I even visited the Black Forest region known as the original home of the cuckoo clock.

And while I saw some neat stuff and ideas, for the most part parking in these German cities is just like parking in North America. I will say that adoption of certain technologies seems higher there…for example a tendency toward automation rather than human cashiers.

I expected to see a lot of smart cards. After all, I’ve heard dozens of times from North American vendors that the Smart Card has been “hugely successful” for parking in Europe, and that North America's pending transition to smart cards is “just around the corner”.

I think I’ve heard this for about 5 years.

Well, I didn’t see a single smart card.  Not one! Nicht ein!

Smart card technology is really, really neat. It’s also completely misunderstood, thanks to vendors and proponents of the technology who are unable to clearly explain the value of a smart card. Inevitably, every time I hear about smart cards proponents always give the same example of the smart card as an electronic wallet.

Sigh. What good is an electronic wallet? I have a wallet and it already holds cash, credit and debit cards. And soon I’ll be able to pay for junk with my cell phone too. So an electronic wallet is probably the last thing that I need.

But smart cards are much more than an electronic wallet. A smart card is a computer without a battery. It doesn’t do anything until you insert it into a device, at which point it gets power and runs programs on the card. (Unlike Windows, the smart card “boots up” almost instantly and is ready to go.)

The smart card provides the basic features you’d expect in a programmable environment… processing, data storage, reading, writing, and so forth.

Huh?

Okay, I’m losing you… let’s try this again.

Flash-back 20 years to the mid-1980s. The popularity of PCs was really starting to rise, and there were several different (and incompatible) PCs that you could purchase. Apple was still a contender. OS/2 was an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Basically there were several choices, each one with advantages and disadvantages.

I used to get questions from my friends and uncles and cousins who wanted to purchase a computer. Back then they’d ask me: “Blake, which computer should I get?”

And I’d respond: “What do you want to do with it?”

Them: “What can I do with it?”

Me: “Anything you want.”

And they’d be silent because they really didn’t know what they wanted to use the computer for, only that they knew they could run programs on it. But they didn’t understand the programs or where to get them. I would have to explain about world processing programs and spreadsheet programs and drawing programs and personal finance programs and based on their answers to those questions I could recommend the most appropriate computer to buy at the time.

So returning to the world of today you might ask me: “Blake, should I adopt a smart card solution?”

And I’d respond: “What do you want to do with it?”

You: “What can I do with it?”

Me: “Anything you want.”

And you’d be silent because you’re not sure what you can use a smart card for. And now you know it runs programs but what programs? That is, what programs other than an electronic wallet?

Here’s an example of truly valuable and viable use of smart cards (I don’t know if it actually exists anywhere; if it does please let me know!): A smart card meter-based loyalty program.

Pretend you’ve got a single-space meters with a smart card slot in each meter. You could put a “loyalty” program (software) on the smart card. The customer first inserts the card, and then uses coins to pay for the meter time, and then removes the card. In this manner the smart card could be programmed to record the amount of time purchased at the meter. This time would accumulate on the smart card. The smart card would also record the time, date, and meter location.

Note that the smart card is not required for the meter to operate… if the parker doesn’t have a smart card they can still pay for meter-time; it’s just that the time is not recorded in the loyalty program.

So when the customer reaches a certain threshold – let’s say after purchasing 600 cumulative minutes of parking - then the smart card could instruct the meter to offer a discount for parking. In other words, each time the smart card is inserted into a meter the meter automatically provides 10 “bonus time minutes” of parking after the first coin is inserted. The customer uses coins to add more time if he/she desires.

When the customer builds up the balance to the next threshold (say, 1200 minutes) then perhaps the bonus time doubles to 20 minutes for each usage. You could add as many thresholds to this structure if you like.

Now perhaps you don’t like the idea of customers running around with too many bonus minutes on their cards. So let’s build a limitation into our smart card program so that it’s only good for one year. After a year the parker returns the smart card for a replacement card because they want to start accumulating minutes again and get their bonus time.

When the parker returns the smart card to the parking office you can read this card with your in-office equipment. Not only can you tell how many minutes have been accumulated on each card, but you also get a complete parking history of each day the customer parked, where they parked, how much time they paid for, and how many bonus minutes had been offered.

You can tie this data back to the individual smart card holder if you want, using this information to provide better parking options to the customer. Some customers or operations might have issues with privacy in this case, so alternatively you can preserve the anonymity and use the information for statistical purposes.

Statistically this information has huge value to your parking operation. It can help you determine the relative desirability of meter locations, measure demand against price over time, estimate when it’s most cost effective to collect from those meters since you’ll have an idea of how many coins are in them), and guess at when enforcement officers should hit that area because meters usage is high (so theoretically the metered area would also have a higher number of offenders – so you catch more baddies at that time of day).

Extending this example a little further…

You want to start encouraging more use of your off-street facilities. You could add to the smart card software a new feature that gives a free day of garage parking when you buy time at meters in the garage neighborhood. As customers replace their cards they get the new software.

Or you could arrange with the local Starbucks operations to give $1 off a purchase each time a parker uses his/her smart card on that block (you’d have to provide some equipment to the coffee shop in this case and also alter your smart card software to recognize which Starbucks are located near which meters). I’ll bet Starbucks would be all over this example… they’d offer the discount simply because it will increase their business.

Okay, that’s enough of that example.

Hopefully this describes a smart card as more than an electronic wallet. Note that I purposefully avoided the concept of using the smart card to pay for the parking, preferring to use coins to illustrate the point – though of course this would also be a viable implementation of smart card technology.

If the vendor doesn’t offer the smart card solution that you want then define the specification with a description like that above. Be detailed. Figure out how parkers will try to beat the system. And then let your vendor know that you want to do this… they’ll figure out a way to program it for you.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble on this whole smart card thing so I’ll cut it off here.

Let me close with a return to the World Parking Symposium. Overall it was a good conference. I look forward to reconvening with this eclectic group of parking uber-geeks in 2007 at Penn State University for the World Parking Symposium VI. Perhaps you’ll join us there!

 

Comments

[Janelle]

I have to admit that I always wondered about the usefulness of using another card just to pay for parking. It just seems so inefficient considering that I already have so many other plastics in my wallet :P

Do you know what other applications the Europeans are using for their smart cards? Wouldn't it make more sense for the Europeans to pay with their cell phones, considering their high penetration rate?