Cities use mobile technology to overtake parking problems
By Greg Spencer
Here's a riddle: Name one urban problem that can actually be profitable instead of costly to solve.
Did you guess parking?
Guido Bruggeman, a public transport consultant from Amsterdam, explored the issue a few years ago in Bucharest, Sofia and other CEE cities while working with the EBRD. Giving advice on fiscal management of urban transport, he urged these cities to rein in parking. For Bucharest, he estimated potential parking revenues of EUR 100 million per year, based on a modest hourly tariff on each of the city's 60,000 spaces and assuming normal rates of occupancy, but only a few districts have followed Bruggeman's lead.
Bruggeman raised the issue at a recent working group meeting of SPUTNIC, a European project devoted to the betterment of public transport through experience-sharing. According to the consultant, cities put off addressing their parking woes for many reasons-politics, obviously, one of them. Another reason is that parking is a big and often shady business involving figures who don't give up control easily. Also, new parking systems often require new legal frameworks and structures.
Ultimately, however, the benefits outweigh the costs, Bruggeman points out. Consider Bologna, Italy, which tenders out its parking business to a private company. The winning firm handles everything from collecting tariffs to citing offenders and chasing down tardy payments. "The concessionaire pays the city EUR 10 million a year, and the city doesn't have to do anything," Bruggeman says.
A strict regime also makes parking less of an urban problem. In Amsterdam, the city has used high tariffs (EUR 4.80/hour in the city centre) to limit the number of cars crowding the of its 17th-century canal streets. That city's famous friendliness toward cyclists and pedestrians is due in no small measure to expensive parking.
City dwellers in CEE aren't yet ready for such steep fees, but a couple of cities are moving in the right direction. Five years ago, Zagreb introduced a system that allows motorists to pay parking tariffs by SMS. When you park your car in one of the city's 17,000 public parking spots, all you do is type in your license plate number and zone (1, 2 or 3) and send it to a dispatching centre. Parking inspectors then receive electronic verification that you've paid. An added convenience is that five minutes before your allotted time expires, you get an automatically generated warning by SMS.
This convenient system has proven popular, and today accounts for about 70 percent of all parking revenues and has improved fee-paying compliance, claims Srecko Simurina, a representative from Zagrebparking Company.
An SMS system has also been introduced recently in the Bulgarian capital. Parking stubs were previously available in Sofia only from human vendors, who aren't always easy to locate. SMS payment now makes it possible that the city might be able to avoid ever having to install mechanical parking metres. While the system represents a popular and undeniable step forward, parking in Sofia remains over-subscribed and difficult to find, especially downtown. Although several investors are clamouring to build multi-level parking facilities downtown, officials have yet to approve any project. Nor are they willing to raise street parking tariffs.
Public parking is still a pressing problem across the region. But cities like Amsterdam, whose own parking situation was a mess two decades ago, offer hope. With the benefits of Western experience and 21st-century technologies, CEE cities can't be far behind.
