May-June-2022 - 32

COVER STORY
AUTHOR Bill Smith
Managing Parking
in the Post-COVID World
Parking guidance and customer service solutions are
essential for airport parking operations optimization.
AIRPORTS ARE full again, and airport parking garages
are even fuller. This may be good news for the bottom-line,
but it's not necessarily good news for travelers.
It can be mind-numbingly difficult
to spot an open parking space in a sea
of occupied spaces. In some airports it
can now take travelers 20 or 30 minutes
to find an available parking space. This
would be a problem for any parking
facility, but it can be a particularly frustrating
issue for air travelers, who are
often rushing to catch a flight.
Parking technologies like advanced
access and revenue equipment, parking
guidance, customer service solutions,
and pre-booking are so important today.
" Technology should be an integral
element of every airport parking
program, " said Rob McConnell, vice
president at WGI Parking Solutions.
" When airports can help travelers get in
and out of parking facilities quickly and
conveniently, they can provide a much
more enjoyable and less stressful travel
experience. "
Parking Guidance
A parking guidance system can be an
essential tool for helping travelers find
a parking spot close to their terminal
quickly and conveniently. Parking
guidance systems monitor and analyze
parking areas to determine where in
the parking garage or lot parking is
available and transmit that information
to strategically located signs at entrances,
individual floors, and sometimes even
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BILL SMITH
Bill Smith is a writer specializing in
parking, and contributing editor to
Parking & Mobility magazine. He can
be reached at bsmith@smith-phillips.
com
Automating the parking experience makes
parking more convenient for travelers and
more manageable for airports. PARCS
technology controls the automated parking
system and can accept most forms of
payment.
SKIDATA
in individual aisles. When drivers enter
the parking facility, signs tell them how
many spaces are available on each floor
at that moment, then as they ascend to
different parking floors signs tell them
how many spaces are available on
that floor. A good parking guidance
system can reduce the amount of time
it takes to find parking by as much as
20 minutes.
" Parking guidance is particularly
useful for airport parking facilities,
which tend to be large and are
often close to capacity, " said Chris
Scheppmann, managing partner at
EnSight Technologies. " When you are
rushing to catch a flight, having technology
available to guide you to an open
space can be incredibly helpful. "
However, most airports still haven't
taken the plunge. The primary reason
has generally been cost. An accurate
single space guidance system can cost
hundreds of thousands - even millions
32 \ AIRPORT BUSINESS / MAY/JUNE 2022
- of dollars and require intensive infrastructure
retrofits to install. The costs
and associated installation times have
deterred many airports from adding
parking guidance.
Car counting systems are also an
option, but in the past, they've been
extremely unreliable and inaccurate.
The latest parking guidance technology
to be introduced, intelligent
camera technology, bridges the gap
between single space guidance and car
counting. Intelligent camera technology
does in-motion car counting. The
technology platform leverages AI to
perform object recognition to guarantee
99% or greater accuracy, a degree
of accuracy that was previously only
available with single-spaced guidance,
at a fraction of the cost. The platform
accurately monitors how many vehicles
come and go into facilities and on individual
floors and analyzes the data to
determine how many spaces are available
in the area that's being monitored. It
then transmits that data to strategically
located signs at garage entrances and on
individual floors.
" The cameras have machine learning,
so the system is constantly improving
itself and keeping up with the introduction
of new types of vehicles, " said
Scheppmann. " This will be important
in the future, as self-driving vehicles
become common and as other new
vehicle technologies are introduced. "
Customer
Service
As reliable as modern
PARCS equipment
is, transactions
don't always go as
planned. Whether problems arise
because of user error or an issue with
the equipment, a customer service
representative can solve the problem.
When a customer service solution is
in place, it can provide a direct real-time
connection, via video or audio link, to
a trained customer servicer professional.
The customer serve rep can help walk
the driver through the payment process
and, if necessary, lift the gate for the
driver if the issue can't be resolved. 
Read more at www.
AviationPros.com/21267890
http://www.AviationPros.com/21267890
May-June-2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May-June-2022
