Redefining Parking with Smart Car Parks

With an approximate 30% of time spent searching for parking lots, parking in urban environments is a universal bugbear for motorists all over the world.^[1] Besides the time wasted, circling for parking contributes to traffic congestion and carbon emissions. At the same time, car park operators grapple with increasing operational and maintenance costs, limited visibility on parking occupancy, and inefficient fee collection methods arising from conventional car park management systems.

Technologies such as AI, big data analytics, video analytics, automation and cloud can help tackle these issues, modernise car park operations and improve environmental sustainability for the benefit of motorists, operators and communities. As the electric vehicle (EV) market gains momentum, integrated parking services are also evolving to include EV charging functionalities alongside digital payment services to create a seamless parking experience for motorists.

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Our GoParkin™ Smart Car Park innovation is a ticketless and barrier-free system that is built on a secure, cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) platform. Paired with a mobile app, it unifies car park operations on a single, robust platform to provide convenient and seamless parking for motorists, while providing real-time visibility and analytics of car park operations to enhance operational efficiencies for car park operators. It also provides EV charging functionalities, offering a more convenient payment and charging experience for motorists.

The GoParkin Smart Car Park Suite can be deployed at all car park premises. Features of the Smart Car Park Suite include:

• Barrier-Free, Ticketless System

Unlike conventional car parks, the Smart Car Park does not require physical barriers at the car park entry/exit points or physical payment/ticketing systems. Combining AI-driven Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology with advanced video analytics, vehicle licence plate details can automatically be detected and captured upon entry and exit. The vehicle information is recorded on the Visitor Management System which is linked to a Smart Car Park Management Platform.

This allows parking fees to be quickly and automatically calculated and billed to the motorist via a mobile app, minimising service-related issues and revenue loss due to equipment downtime, while enabling smooth vehicle entry and exit through the car park and an improved customer experience.

• GoParkin Mobile App

For motoring convenience, parking services are delivered digitally 24/7 through the one-stop GoParkin mobile app. Integrating parking services, EV charging, information and digital payment applications for motorists, the app also provides real-time car park occupancy information and directional navigation to the closest parking available via user-friendly maps, allowing motorists to reduce circling and easily find parking. In addition, the app allows parking and EV charges to be automatically billed and paid via a variety of digital payment options while providing convenient access to other parking services such as season parking applications.

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• Smart Car Park Management Platform 

The GoParkin Smart Car Park Management Platform centrally manages all car park operations and maintenance regimes. Through data analytics, car park equipment can be monitored to generate insights that facilitate preventive and predictive maintenance. This allows operators to extend the lifecycle of car park equipment and avoid costly downtime.

To help car park operators better plan resource management and optimise operational efficiencies, data analytics aggregates and analyses parking data to generate key insights on occupancy records, car park resource status and parking transactions. The platform provides a bird’s eye view through a unified dashboard with real-time monitoring which  helps to optimise the allocation of parking lots and better matches pricing with demand for optimised revenue collection. The remote monitoring and access to real-time car park status and transactions also allow car park operators to scale their operations accordingly, managing single or multiple car parks at any time with reduced reliance on manpower.

• IoT-as-a-Service

The IoT platform is a modular solution that is designed to integrate with mobile applications and other systems such as Parking Guidance Systems, EV charging, enforcement systems and payment modules. A Software-as-a-Service option can help car park operators deploy the solution quickly and cost-effectively without the need for heavy infrastructure and software investments.In addition, as a service enhancement for car park operators, a knowledge management system is built into the solution to help car park operators manage motorists’ queries more efficiently, enhancing the parking experience for motorists. Enabled by generative AI, the system is capable of autonomously extracting information from its operation and maintenance manual, guidelines and policies, producing immediate and precise answers to motorists’ queries. This reduces the manpower attending to enquiries, allowing car park operators to focus on more value-added tasks.

Our Smart Car Park solution is certified as an IoT Market Ready Solution by Intel, a programme that qualifies solutions that are optimised for data-intensive workloads and are adaptable, vetted, and ready for immediate implementation across multiple industries.

Since we debuted Singapore’s first barrier-free Smart Car Park at the Nanyang Technology University Singapore (NTU) in 2020, it has continued to enhance and extend the technology and solution to customers in Singapore and internationally. It is designed to meet the digitalisation, integration and operational requirements of existing and new building owners, car park operators and other transport stakeholders.

At NTU, selected barrier-free smart car parks have been modernised and integrated with EV charging capabilities, enabling seamless parking and charging convenience for EV users while supporting NTU’s sustainability goals.

Further to its ability to scale and be customised to meet customer requirements, the barrier-free Smart Car Park is also deployed at Dubai Mall, one of the largest malls in the world with over 13,000 parking lots. Integrated with Dubai’s Salik traffic toll system developed by our tolling business TransCore, the smart car park system enables ticketless and seamless entry and exit for motorists at the mall through automatic fee deduction from their prepaid Salik accounts.

Thanks to technology, motorists now enjoy seamless and hassle-free parking, while car park operators achieve maintenance and operational cost savings, and most of all, gain useful insights to offer new value-added services and future-proof their business models.  

Learn more about our GoParkin Smart Car Park Suite.

^[1] Source: Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking, Chicago: Planners Press, 2005 and 2011.