By Yona Shtern
When I write the words “parking garage,” what comes to mind?
If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have likely said the following: A large structure. Often gray and cold in the winter. Perhaps not the most inviting place, but a place I need to go to store my car for some period of time – out of necessity.
Today? It would be a completely different response. Let me explain.
Ten years ago, parking garages were essentially passive real estate. They were large structures (often built and left alone) simply waiting for use. Sometimes packed with vehicles during the day or peak evening hours, causing drivers to circle block after block in traffic looking for a garage with an open space or an acceptable price. Other times, they could be eerily empty, especially during the overnight hours.
Today, things have changed. Now, I like to think of parking garages as hubs for connected mobility services.
Virtually every vehicle coming off the assembly line now has a modem with internet connectivity. 5G promises to deliver lightning-fast bandwidth that will transform the nature of connected content and mobility services. Large brands like Google, Amazon and Apple are focused on bringing convenient, connected features and their content to drivers and passengers in connected cars across the world.
While autonomous vehicles are still years away, connected mobility is quickly becoming a reality today. The promise of a driver pulling out of the garage having their coffee ordered automatically, their parking spot reserved and paid for, the nearest gas pump or EV charger primed and ready to fuel, and their route optimized to get to their first meeting or first pitch on time is already a possibility.
Additionally, voice-powered assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Home…
By Sidharth Malhotra
Part 1 – A Simple Guide to Understand Blockchain with a Real-World Analogy
Everyone is talking about Bitcoin these days, from your barber to your friends working the stock market. Don’t worry. This article is not about making money from Bitcoin. However, I will try to help you understand the underlying technology which makes Bitcoin work and how this concept of blockchain can be useful in the coming decades.
Historical Overview
October 31, 2008, a white paper from an anonymous person or organization named Satoshi Nakamoto was published which explained a novel approach to send money from sender to receiver directly without involving any financial intermediaries. The paper gave a name to this concept — Bitcoin. Since, Bitcoin uses some underlying concepts of cryptography, this new way of exchanging money was categorized as cryptocurrency. The only purpose of Bitcoin was for financial transactions, but researchers realized that its foundational technology can be harvested to build other secure and robust applications that can revolutionize the way current systems work. “Blockchain” was the name given to this foundational technology. Lots of technical words? Let’s simplify!
What is Blockchain? — A Real World Parking Analogy
Centralized Parking Scenario
Let’s imagine that you live in a city, which has space to accommodate 200 cars at one time (assume that there is one parking structure with a ground floor). This facility has a main gate which stays locked and is only opened when a car moves in or out. Now let’s analyze this single parking building from different points of view.
Price: Since some private company built this parking facility exclusively for parking purposes and all the maintenance and operating costs will be borne by the owner company, there will be a high fee for renting out a single parking space.
Security: If…
Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are poised to revolutionize not only transportation but the way people live and work throughout the world. As technology, auto and transportation leaders around the world continue to evolve for a CAV-driven future, the testing and validation of CAV technologies is critical to ensuring the safe implementation of CAV innovations.
The Ottawa L5 test facilities offers world-class integrated testing grounds for the safe implementation of CAVs. On site, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) testing, validation and demonstration of technologies are enabled on both public and private test tracks, in Ottawa’s true four-season climate. The Ottawa L5 testing facilities are equipped with GPS (RTK), dedicated short range communications (DSRC), Wi-Fi, 4G/LTE and 5G telecommunications and networking infrastructure, making it the first integrated CAV test environment of its kind in North America.
As a tech hub with decades of internationally-recognized strengths in fields at the heart of CAV technology, Ottawa is ideally positioned to address the needs and opportunities facing CAV innovators and firms. For example, in communications technology, Ottawa is home to the top five mobile backhaul equipment market vendors, the top ten optical network hardware vendors and 90 percent of telecommunications research. The Ottawa L5 harnesses these and other capabilities, enabling users of the test track to benefit from Ottawa’s leadership in sensors, LIDARS and related technologies that represent key components of CAVs.
Today, CAVs are not fully autonomous. Although there are many levels of automation and intelligence integrated into vehicles, there are many perspectives about when fully self-driving cars will become a reality. Driving automation levels are defined and classified from 0 to 5, with level 5 (L5) indicating full autonomy. The branding of Ottawa’s test facilities as Ottawa L5 reflects the vision, aspiration and commitment of Ottawa’s CAV leaders to enable and accelerate the safe development, validation…
New Services Taking Hold as Over a Quarter of Young Drivers Rely on Car Sharing and 3 in 10 Canadians Would Buy Completely Online
Markham, ON, April 1, 2019 – Canadian Black Book is releasing results from its annual car buying study, conducted by Ipsos. The study breaks down the differences between various Canadian demographics, in how they shop, what they expect and overall knowledge gaps when it comes to vehicle shopping, buying and ownership. Continue
Montreal’s new six-person mobility squad officially hit the road Wednesday, working to alleviate traffic congestion in the city’s downtown core by removing illegally parked cars and non-compliant construction sites.
Still in its infancy, the squad will only be patrolling five designated sectors in downtown Montreal, the Sud-Ouest borough and Plateau-Mont-Royal, where the city perceives traffic to be at its worst, from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Each of the sectors will be monitored by one inspector from the mobility squad between 5 a.m. and 1 p.m., after which another inspector will take over to patrol all five sectors until 11 p.m. Their focus is on mornings because that is when most constructions sites are set up and therefore when most obstructions are created, the city said.
Despite the low number of mobility squad inspectors out on the roads, Mayor Valérie Plante said they “are confident that we can cover the territory.” She emphasized that the six new mobility squad inspectors are working with those already employed by the city of Montreal and the police department’s road-safety officers. The difference, she said, is that the new inspectors are focusing solely on traffic.
“It’s really about being more agile,” Plante said.
The squad’s objective is to identify obstructions before they begin to cause congestion, such as a delivery truck parked in a bike lane or construction site set up without following permit regulations. One example Plante offered was that of a construction site set up without police supervision, which its permit required.
The inspectors have the authority to hand out fines for municipal infractions, ranging from $500 to $7,000 for repeat offenders, and are in direct contact with Montreal police, who can issue tickets for road-safety code violations. They also have immediate…
Looking for thoughts from other cities as we consider introducing Uber and Lyft. Any changes to policies, impacts to parking supply and demand
and anything else that might be relevant.
Thank you in advance!
– Halifax
I’m volunteering on a local Hospital committee that’s looking to put together an RFP for parking equipment. Would any of you have a template/sample they could use as a guideline for this specific type of RFP?
I have had a patron ask me what my plans are for facilitating 120 charging for her electric vehicle as it is a simple 120 plug.
What are other institutions doing? I am sure this request will become more and more common.
She said she can use out standard block heater plug ins but is it my obligation to turn those on for people to charge their cars?
Thoughts?
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