By Chris Mckenty

Canadian airports, unlike most of their American counterparts, are operated by non-share, not-for-profit airport authorities and are mandated to operate as self-sustaining businesses. This gives them greater freedom to adopt new technology pricing and marketing strategies that help them reach their goals. This is especially the case in commercial areas like parking.

Canadian airports, unlike most of their American counterparts, are operated by non-share, not-for-profit airport authorities and are mandated to operate as self-sustaining businesses. This gives them greater freedom to adopt new technology pricing and marketing strategies that help them reach their goals. This is especially the case in commercial areas like parking.

In the past few years, this technology has included the ability to give their customers the option to book and pre-pay for their car parking online via the Canadian’s Airports website or mobile app.  You might be surprised to learn that last month alone (June 2014) nearly 10,000 fully prepaid parking bookings were made at just 3 of Canada’s airports generating an additional $750,000 of revenue for the airports. Edmonton Airport is predicted to grow its pre paid parking by 40% annually over 2015.

With this greater freedom the incentives and drivers for change can vary depending on the dynamics at each Airport,however common factors are apparent. These include:

• Increasing competition from off airport car parks
• Under budget achievement for car parking revenue
  Spare parking capacity or very limited capacityin the car parks
• A desire to improve customer service

Another significant factor in the decision to adopt this new technology is the lack of specific information on who the passengers and Airport customers are. Airlines have long since had access to this data but for many reasons have been either unable or unwilling to share this detailed traveller data.  By offering an online reservation solution for their car parks, the Airports…

By Sarah Levy Sarfin

Typically when governments wish to raise revenue, they tax the population. One common tax is the federal and provincial fuel tax. The proceeds of this tax have funded municipal infrastructure needs across Canada. However, continuing to rely on a fuel tax to pay for infrastructure is not an eternal solution. According to a study commissioned by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO) written by Professor Harry Kitchen of Trent University, a number of factors will lead to a decline in fuel revenues. Kitchen offered alternatives to a fuel tax: road pricing and parking taxes or levies. 

While the RCCAO study focuses on the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas (GTHA), it has implications for the rest of the country. Kitchen pointed out that the push for energy-efficient vehicles, the proliferation of electric and hybrid vehicles, the decrease in the number of young adults (especially in urban areas) and Baby Boomer drivers will all negatively impact revenues from a fuel tax.

“Road pricing” refers to creating toll highways. Kitchen believes some form of road pricing in the GTHA might be an effective option to raise revenues that will fund infrastructure development and maintenance. He pointed to research that shows that road pricing can generate significant amounts of money. However, his recommendations about parking taxes and levies offer food for thought to the Canadian parking industry.

The Economics of Parking

Kitchen examines parking through the lens of economics. In his study, he asserted that parking is inefficiently priced. In economics, efficiency refers to the optimal allocation of resources. The economics professor explained that on-street parking in high-demand areas is priced far below its scarcity value. “Scarcity value” means that when something is in limited supply and high demand, there will be a mismatch of the desired supply and demand equilibrium….

By Bern Grush

A self-locating, self-paying parking meter can dramatically improve workflow, enforcement and the political relationship between municipal parking management and its stakeholders. This technology meshes with existing pay-by-phone and pay-and-display systems.

Few parkers are likely to appreciate that municipal parking management is a considerably more complex matter than may appear when they are frustrated by no parking signs, parking citations, poles with multiple confusing instructions, loading zones, handicapped parking, no stopping, variable time limits, too little parking just where they want it, and so on. Municipal parking has many different requirements and there are many stakeholders with conflicting priorities involved in the task of fitting what is sometimes too many automobiles into the scarce spots along our urban streets. In any large urban area and many medium-sized ones, municipal parking management is certainly far more difficult than managing the lots or garages for suburban shopping malls.

Municipalities always want their parking spaces utilized correctly for traffic flow and safety reasons. They generally like to see a sensible occupancy level to ensure a balanced, vibrant commercial downtown—i.e., not so much that access is denied to some or that congestion is inadvertently encouraged. Nor so little that the commercial district might suffer and businesses relocate. Many cities need to generate sufficient revenue to fund the collection and enforcement process, and a significant number even seek to generate a surplus for their treasury.

Business associations want business traffic, including people that arrive in automobiles. This generally results in demand for plentiful free or cheap parking which cities can increasingly ill-afford from a financial or traffic management perspective.

Environmentalists consider the automobile and by association, parking, to be a problem—and they have a point. They may want parking to cost more, or to have less of it available. The logic of parking scarcity to discourage use…