The advancement of technology has made life luxurious for everyone. However, the introduction of smart parking system is not a luxury but rather a necessity. This change has been brought about by the advancement in Internet of Things which is a new and evolving concept. This concept lets inanimate things interact with each other through the internet with minimal human interference. The result of this new technology is everything is smart these days, including parking systems. The need for such Parking Guidance Solutions is the increase in number of cars on the road and the increase of pollution and the lack of parking places. In urban areas, a big portion of the traffic problems because of lack of parking spots. The cars drive around looking for open spots increasing the number of cars on the roads without any reason. All these can be solved if a smart parking system is implemented.
Parking is troublesome in the urban areas because of bottlenecks. First of all, cars need to find a parking spot, and there is no easy way to do that. You have to drive around until you find an open spot. Secondly, the ticketing system, that is, the collection of parking revenue is also a big bottleneck. Cars find a parking lot, line up to pay the revenue, and that is a bottleneck. On top of that, there is no way to know how fast the parking lot is filling up and if there is any more spot left or not. With the introduction of smart parking management solutions all these bottlenecks can be solved. The lack of such smart systems not only effects the traffic conditions but also increases the CO2 emissions and emissions of other harmful gases which causes pollution. That is why the urban areas are moving towards a smarter parking solution.
IoT or Internet of Things is a wonderful technology that decreases human dependency. Through sensors and improved software, things or electronic devices can communicate with each other through the internet. This means, objects can upload information on the cloud and other objects can download the information. So cars or the ticketing machines can upload parking related information such as closest open parking spot and other cars can easily make an informed decision based on that information. The inclusion of mobile applications can make it even easier as the drivers of the cars can access the information easily as well. With the inclusion of other technologies, paying the parking fee also becomes easier. The advantages of these advancement in parking technologies will be enjoyed by both parking system. Both long term and short term parking users will benefit from smart off-road parking systems. That is why this technology has been so appreciated all across the world.
The only problem in implementing these smart parking systems is the amount of money involved. It requires implementation of infrastructure and then implementation of the actual technology. The whole system needs to be reinstalled, which can be expensive. The government is not very willing to assist the municipalities in implementing these parking systems. However, it is highly necessary to use these in urban areas so the municipalities are left with no funding to install all new smart parking systems. They have thus decided to make it a joint project by taking investments from privately owned organisations. The private-public partnership can be very beneficial to the urban areas. Due to the high investment required in these smart parking systems, only the developed countries have been able to implement this technology but other countries can be expected to follow the trend pretty soon.
