PARKING INTEGRATION
The city, and the people and vehicles that use it are being transformed rapidly by the use of mobile technology. Already IoT sensors, mobile apps, mobile payments and smart parking are revolutionising the ways that city approach their parking provision. At the same time, cars are beginning to become connected to all manner of services, meaning that soon parking availability will be able to be transmitted direct to the driver’s dashboard. And in the not too distant future, autonomous vehicles have the potential to completely change our cities environment and parking provision will have to adapt to the new demands that this change brings. Once data on parking availability is generated, it can be linked directly into a navigation system and direct the driver to the precise parking spot. Combined with mobile payments, this means that parking spaces can be reserved in advance before a driver even enters the city, cutting down on congestion and pollution. Integration with wider transport networks is also an important consideration with many integrated services including out of city parking at transitional transport hubs as part of their offering. Parking usage can be used to understand potential public transport demand, and where parking spaces are actively removed to encourage alternative modes of travel, intelligent decisions are able to be taken about how best to balance different needs across the city. Drivers of electric vehicles, and in the future, autonomous vehicles have specific requirements for parking. Obviously electric vehicles need to have at least overnight parking next to a charging point, which can be managed with today’s smart parking services through vehicle classification and prioritisation. Underpinning all of these stakeholders are the communications service providers who are able to link the different components together and the parking operators themselves who are able to join together the elements into a packaged, managed service which the city can use to their advantage.
Mobile networks are future-proofing themselves with the introduction of Mobile IoT leading to the support of massive numbers of IoT connections. These networks are standardised, upgradable, and offered in licensed spectrum ensuring future service support.