Winnipeg Parking Authority Driving into the Transportation Mobility Sector – Vehicle for Hire Division is Recognized as the “Global Regulator of the Year for 2023”

By Randy Topolniski

In 2017, the Province of Manitoba passed The Local Vehicles for Hire Act, which dissolved the Manitoba Taxicab Board, repealed The Taxicab Act, and associated regulations, and transferred oversight of vehicle for hire (VFH) regulation to the municipalities. The Winnipeg Parking Authority (WPA)- a special operating agency of the City of Winnipeg- assumed responsibility for regulating the VFH industry, with Grant Heather managing this new business line. In December 2017, the City enacted a new Vehicles for Hire By-law that streamlined and modernized VFH regulations, and the newly formed VFH division opened its doors in 2018.

2023 Global Regulator of the Year

For the past several years, the WPA has been a member of the International Association of Transportation Regulators (IATR), a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing best practices in the licensing and regulation of for-hire ground transportation services.  In recognition of their efforts to improve VFH service in Winnipeg, Grant Heather and the WPA’s VFH division was recently named the IATR’s 2023 Global Regulator of the Year. Winnipeg is only the second Canadian city ever to receive the IATR’s Global Regulator of the Year award, joining other recent winners including Montreal, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, and New York. Said Grant Heather, “This award is especially gratifying considering we have only been around for five years. It speaks to the incredible contributions our entire team has made in that short time.”

Over the course of those five years, the WPA’s VFH division has undertaken a number of initiatives to improve driver and passenger safety (winnipeg.ca/vehiclesforhire/safety-security.stm), service accessibility, and the integration of for-hire travel options into Winnipeg’s transportation system.  Early examples include the addition of audio capabilities to the onboard camera systems required in each taxi and a rigorous vehicle safety program…

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How Off-site Airport Parking Facilities Are Evolving

By Vitaly Vinogradov

We all hate traveling to the airport; that’s a fact of life. Half the problem is the parking situation. Airport parking can be a hassle, expensive, and unsafe. And despite the digital revolution and the rapid push to automation, airport parking has remained largely unchanged. It badly needs a revamp.  

With on-site parking facilities being overly congested and often archaic, offsite airport parking lots have emerged as a viable alternative. Though off-site has earned a negative reputation for safety, I think that is unfair. In recent years, off-site lots have increasingly adopted and implemented novel security tools embedded with next-generation AI technologies that keep vehicles safer and more secure. Conversely, on-site lots have largely fallen behind the technical curve due to the overhead costs involved.  

Off-site parking lots have lower operating expenses, so they tend to charge lower rates, making them a more cost-effective option for travelers. The lower overhead costs also allow offsite lot operators to implement new technologies and experiment a bit. Yet offsite also poses challenges logistically, such as travelers getting from the lot to the airport and back. Many travelers are thus still willing to pay more for the convenience of on-site parking, despite the general lack of technical sophistication.

Regardless of your personal preferences, its clear technology has been rapidly advancing at off-site parking lots, which are attempting to compete with official airport parking. Let’s look into the how and why. 

Busting the Myth

Many travelers assume on-site airport parking is safer because it’s an official service offered by the airport. However, on-site lots tend to sprawl across large swaths of land, and they can be difficult for airports to monitor and manage. Moreover, they’re typically not cordoned off from the…

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Cold Weather Complicates Electric Vehicle Deployment

By Bill Franklin

The Electric Vehicle revolution is everywhere, featured in news headlines, YouTube EV Road reviews, endlessly analyzed in business publications, pursued and promoted by politicians. This amazing sea change after 120 years of the internal combustion engine (ICE) has inspired city councils to mandate fleet services switch to electric. Alas, this is where the rubber hits the road, and reality and reason collide with aspirations.

The City of Saskatoon’s Parking management is a client of our company and approached us to evaluate the feasibility of switching their LPR vehicles to all electric. We already had installed autoChalk LPR on electric vehicles elsewhere and it had minimal impact. But cold temperatures significantly impact battery performance and increase a vehicle’s energy consumption. We were intrigued to join them as part of
their analysis.

Since the internal combustion engine has been around for over a century, engineers and manufacturers have improved both the engines and vehicles to face extreme cold. At times Saskatoon dips to minus 50°C yet their diesel- and gas-powered vehicles, trucks, tractors, snowplows, SUVs are out in the field doing their job. 

What then should be expected of an electric vehicle?

• Operates in temperatures from -50°C to +40°C.

• Runs all day on a tank of fuel or an electric charge.

• Starts up reliability every morning and runs all day, month after month.

• Is comfortable to drive, has storage space, can have equipment mounted to it (e.g., License Plate Recognition equipment).

• Fleet services can maintain it and get parts.

• Purchase price of CAD$40,000 or less for an EV SUV.

• Maintenance cost is reasonable.

• Infrastructure cost is affordable.

Tesla and Nissan have been producing electric cars and SUVs for fifteen years and Toyota has sold the very successful Prius hybrid…

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Parkades in the EV Era

From code changes to fire safety, now’s the time to plan ahead

By Frank Cavaliere

In the coming decade, car manufacturers in Canada will be subject to penalties for not producing and selling the right quota of electric vehicles (EV), contributing to a rapid rise in EV ownership. Given electric-powered vehicles are heavier than their gas-fuelled counterparts, there’s a good chance Building Code requirements will be changing in the near-term to address design loads for parkades, particularly as more electric pick-up trucks and SUVs begin flooding the market. 

“Currently, it’s the owner’s decision whether or not to upgrade their parkades,” says Frank Cavaliere, Managing Principal at RJC Engineers. “But new parkades being designed and constructed should, prudently, be engineered to support more load than the Code requires to provide capacity for future vehicles,” he says. “We know what’s coming—and that’s larger, heavier models, including…dare I say…electric Hummers.” 

The current recommendations for what are deemed by the industry to be acceptable floor coatings in parkades were based on lighter passenger car vehicles with pneumatic or “air-inflated” tires.  EVs shall be heaver and they shall impose more wear on the floor coatings.  These floor coatings are important because they are protecting the floor structure from corrosion.  

Not only are EV vehicles forecast to be heavier, but the tire types are forecast to be changing to non-pneumatic.  Non-pneumatic tires would resemble a wire-mesh frame-type and be not air-filled like.  These would be like those used for the Moon Buggy driven by the Astronauts.  Today these tires are quite expensive and not yet market competitive.  Much research needs to be done however they shall require much less maintenance (without getting a “flat”) while they impose much higher stresses on the floor…

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Separating Fact from Fiction: An Insider’s Insight into LPR

By Bill Franklin

Our company, Tannery Creek Systems, has been making License Plate Recognition equipment since 2007. In the sixteen years growing our company across North America, one of the most common and interesting topics that our clients raise is license plate recognition (LPR). How does it work? Can I use it for permits? Do you sell this data? What is the rate of recognition?

This article was inspired by the LPR panel that I moderated at this year’s Canadian Parking Association conference and tradeshow. The set of questions raised by or to the audience is the springboard to this article. I have added additional questions that our clients have asked us. In this question-and-answer format, you may discover a deeper understanding of LPR.

What is LPR?

License Plate Recognition (LPR) is a specialized Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system. It requires a camera and computer to extract the characters and try to make sense of them. LPR, among other names, is also known as:

  • Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) 
  • Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR)
  • Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI)
  • Plate scanner

LPR was originally developed at Scotland Yard in the UK and began operation in 1978, so it has been around for a good many years.

How does it work?

Typically, a camera captures 20 frames per second (or more) and these frames are analyzed for the presence of a rectangular surface with digits, i.e., a license plate. The analysis can be in the camera that has a sophisticated microprocessor, a graphics processing unit (GPU)  or processed in the Cloud which will employ essentially the same thing, i.e., a GPU. Two competing systems perform LPR: font-based recognition versus the newer artificial intelligence (AI) also called machine learning based systems. 

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Data Driven – Municipal Parking Administrators May Be Focusing on the Wrong Types of Data

By Brian Wolff 

Over the past decade, municipal parking has become extremely data centric. As municipal parking administrators have come to rely increasingly on technology to improve the parking experience, they’ve discovered that these same tools can provide valuable operational data that can be used to manage parkades more efficiently and effectively. 

PARCS systems, parking guidance, LPR, and mobile payment apps are wonderful management tools that provide important utilization data. Need to know how full your lot or parkade is, and when it tends to be most full? These technologies can tell you, often in real-time on any device. Want to know what types of parkers are using your parkade, an automated permitting program tied to your PARCS system can tell you that. 

It’s obvious why these types of data are so valuable. Benchmarking is an essential element of any parking management program. If you understand your parking trends you can make sensible decisions about how to manage your parking programs. It’s why so many parking owners and operators rely on their PARCS and guidance tools for data.

Ask the Customer

But if you are focused solely on utilization data, you are only getting half the story; and you may not be getting the most important half. As important as it is to know who is parking in your facility, and when, it’s even more important to know how their experience was. Did they have trouble getting in and out of the parkade or lot? Did their payment go smoothly? Did gates and ticket machines work as expected? These are essential issues if you want to earn repeat business from parkers. 

The most obvious way to get this information is by surveying customers. Hearing about parkers’ experiences straight from their own mouths is the best way to see how…

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Managing the Curb with Technology

By Chris Scheppmann

The urban transportation landscape is rapidly changing, with ride sharing services becoming ubiquitous and self-driving vehicles on the horizon. No longer do most travelers drive themselves to a parking facility near their ultimate destinations; today they are just as likely to be dropped off by an Uber or Lyft driver right at the curb in front of their destination. 

This trend has had a significant impact on downtown traffic, cluttering the curb with unmanaged vehicle movement and creating an unsafe environment for drivers and pedestrians alike. And curbs will become even more cluttered when self-driving vehicles begin to populate our streets in significant numbers, dropping off their passengers and then taking off.

In fact, over the past two years we have already begun to experience these changes because of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the height of the initial wave of Covid, restaurants and stores introduced curbside pickup to serve their customers (and to survive). In many neighborhoods curbsides are now more like a free-for-all, with drivers pulling up wherever they like for however long they want. The proliferation of self-driving vehicles will just exacerbate this already serious issue.

A Technological Solution

The answer to these new curbside pressures can be found in Intelligent Camera Technology. Intelligent Camera Technology leverages the latest advancements in vison-based software technology to provide accurate and affordable curb management. The cameras monitor curbside activity in real time, analyzing what types of vehicles are using the curb and for how long, and transmitting that information to a cloud-based platform that determines whether each vehicle’s use of the curb is appropriate. 

The heart of the curb management suite is specialized software that constantly receives data from curbside cameras and analyzes that data in real-time. The software manages a host of essential curb-related tasks, including TNC monitoring,…

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What Future for Smart Parking?

By Geoffrey Garnier

What does the city of tomorrow look like?

The city of tomorrow, which calls itself “smart,” will implement connected solutions (thanks to sensors, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, etc.) that will collect a set of usable and concrete data to make the best possible decisions.

The benefits for these cities are multiple: first, it allows them to improve the engagement of public authorities and citizens by providing solutions that involve them and offer them a better quality of life. But also, to solve their environmental problems with solutions that are ecologically oriented. 

Cities are therefore more connected, efficient in their decision making and eco-responsible.

North American cities are particularly ahead of the curve on this smart city concept with the aim of improving their productivity as well as their connectivity. Many of them have joined the Cities for Climate Protection™ campaign organized by the UN, which commits them to implementing eco-responsible solutions to promote the climate transition. Of the 650 participating municipalities, nearly half are North American: 159 are American and 133 are Canadian.

Some sobering parking figures…

95%, 17h, 900,000 tons… But what do these numbers correspond to? These figures are all related to parking and are the results of different studies around the world:

  • 95%? The time that a private vehicle remains in a parking space. (International Parking Institute, Why parking matters, 2015)
  • 17h? The average time a typical user spends looking for a parking space over the course of a year. And that same average is 107 hours in New York. (INRIX, The Impact of Parking Pain in the US, UK, and Germany, 2017)
  • 900,000 tons? Greenhouse gas emissions that can be avoided through smart parking solutions. (Köln auf dem Weg zur Smart City, 2017)

These figures can be thought-provoking. 

Indeed, parking lots are very often neglected and little…

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When A Parking Solution Isn’t About Parking

Bill Smith

When is a parking solution not about solving a parking problem? It may surprise you to find out that parking garages can also provide solutions to non-parking challenges facing building owners. 

Cell phone coverage poses unique challenges in urban high rise residential and commercial buildings. It can be difficult to provide consistent service throughout high-rise buildings, particularly in underground parking areas. The deeper the underground parkade—the tougher it is to provide consistent cell service.

And the problem is only getting worse. The latest cellular standard, “5G”, operates at very high frequencies and doesn’t penetrate buildings as easily as previous generations of Cellular did. While 5G may be great if you’re sitting in your car downtown, you may not be so lucky in areas with less direct sightlines. 

Traditionally, developers and building owners have had to install distributed antenna systems ‘DAS’ to provide consistent cell service in their buildings. A distributed antenna system is a network of separated antenna nodes connected to a common source to provide wireless service throughout a structure or geographic area. DAS technology is effective but very expensive—a system can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install in a single building. And with cellular technology changing so rapidly, there’s no guarantee that these
DAS systems will continue to work with each new generation of cellular technology. That’s a lot of financial risk for a building owner to take on. The challenge is particularly acute in underground parking facilities, where 5G is particularly unreliable.

A Parking Solution

That was the challenge facing Goddard Investment Group in Dallas. Fountain Place, an office building owned by Goddard Investment, was ready for a cell upgrade that would extend reliable cell service into the building’s underground parkade. But the prospect of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology that may…

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Where Parking and Mobility Meet

By Ravali Kosaraju, PE, PTOE

In some corners of the parking industry “mobility” is considered a dirty word. For some professionals who have devoted their careers to finding new ways for people to park conveniently and safely, the current emphasis in mobility is off-putting. 

In fact, though, parking and mobility are intrinsically connected. Mobility isn’t meant to replace parking; it’s meant to collaborate with it. In fact, as counterintuitive as it may seem, parking is an essential element of mobility.

To understand this, it’s first necessary to take a step back and look at what mobility really is. Mobility is the essential element of urban life. It’s about access. Access to the things people need to live a healthy and rewarding life. Access to friends and relatives, healthcare and other essential services, entertainment, shopping options, work, and recreation opportunities. Transportation is an element of mobility, but it’s not the totality of mobility. Rather, mobility is about having high quality transportation options. 

What makes mobility options “high quality”? First is choice. Do residents and visitors have multiple transportation options? Are there opportunities to use their personal vehicles, access ride-share servicers, utilize public transit, and take advantage of micromobility? Is the community pedestrian friendly? Having a single transportation option isn’t conducive to mobility.

Time is also a key element. If it takes too long to go to and from destinations in a community, because of traffic or because there are too many stops on a bus line or subway line, you don’t have mobility. No one wants to spend hours to get to a grocery store and back, or from work and back.

Finally, safety is a key element of mobility. If it isn’t safe to walk, drive, take public transit, or bike you don’t have mobility. 

So, transportation doesn’t equal mobility. You must offer…

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