By John Mosebar

The parking industry is moving rapidly to contain costs, primarily by creating unstaffed facilities through the automation of ticketing and payment processes. Pair that with a large number of patrons and vehicles in easily accessible facilities and it’s easy to see why parking lots and garages can become magnets for criminals.

Crimes range from theft of property and vehicles to violent assaults against patrons. Fortunately, nearly all parking facility owners and operators feel a very real need to protect their patrons. Security is also an important issue with drivers. Surveys show one-third cite safety as a top factor in choosing where to park their vehicles.

Providing security has become easier with tried-and-true tools and procedures. But there is no one-size-fits-all security plan as parking facilities vary widely by size, type and location. For a parking operator, the process should begin by choosing a security integrator with proven experience securing parking facilities.

Security Tools 

All-hazards assessment – Don’t spend money on security before first analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the facility. Check out the surrounding neighborhood and traffic patterns. Monitor patron’s daily routines. Identify
danger zones such as remote areas of lots and garage stairwells and elevators. This will help create a plan to allocate money for the right equipment, where it is most needed.

Then here’s a look at some of today’s best security tools solutions.

Audio intercoms – Build audio intercoms into entry/exit gates and ticket dispensers to provide instant two-way communication with an offsite security guard or facility operator.

Emergency stations – Although most parking patrons carry their own mobile phones, those devices can’t be counted on in many subterranean or concrete structures or even outdoors during severe weather. Mobile phones also are often the first target of thieves.

Emergency towers, wall-mount boxes or flush mounted stations are effective when placed throughout garages…

By Karim Abraham

Automated lighting controls such as occupancy sensors present significant savings potential for parking facilities. However, quantifying potential savings and assessing the financial viability of a lighting automation project can be challenging. The missing link in planning energy savings projects is actual data to build an accurate business case.

Recently, a parkade in Vancouver’s Chinatown neighbourhood underwent an exercise to reduce energy costs and improve building performance. The parkade had been approached a number of times to update their lighting to save costs. Each time, the numbers looked slightly different – and there was no way to tell what the actual return on investment would be. Eventually, the automation project that was implemented would accurately predict savings and reduce the parkade’s costs by installing occupancy sensors in conjunction with real-time data monitoring.

Energy specialists recognized that the parkade lights did not need to be on 24 hours a day, and that the best business case involved adding occupancy sensors to dramatically reduce the amount of time lights were on each day. The problem was that they were still making assumptions on how much of a reduction the occupancy sensors would generate. Busy days could have significantly lower savings than weekends, and at night the traffic would be different again.

Using a systematic approach, data loggers were installed on the lights in the parkade, and pilot occupancy sensors were installed on one floor only. The data that was produced over the coming weeks showed a reduction in consumption by 49.3% as a result of the installation of occupancy sensors. An excellent result.

The data was then pro-rated to factor the varying traffic flow by floor, and savings calculations were adjusted accordingly. For example, lower floors are likely to receive more traffic and therefore achieve lower savings. The pilot occupancy sensors were installed on…

By Andrew Vidor

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about Canada’s “crumbling infrastructure.” City, provincial, and national decision-makers are facing hard choices—and potentially enormous bills—about how to repair old and worn roadways, bridges, and viaducts.

This infrastructure crisis should serve as a cautionary tale for parking owners, both public and private. As with any infrastructure component, your parkade requires maintenance and routine repairs over its lifetime. To borrow a cliché, it’s easy to be penny wise, but pound foolish. Deferring (or ignoring) routine maintenance will inevitably lead to far more expensive repairs down the road.

But protecting your parking investment doesn’t end with maintenance. It’s just as important to have an asset management plan to operate, maintain, and perhaps even plan for the decommissioning of your parking assets at the end of their useful service life. An asset management plan should revolve around the specific characteristics, uses, and plans for each individual parking asset as well as the organization it supports. It should also take into account the resources that are available to manage the parking asset in the short-term, as well as anticipated parking assets in the years to come.

MAINTAINING YOUR PARKADE

For many parking owners, maintenance can be an elusive concept. As one long-time operator once told me, “I know I’m supposed to be picking up the trash, sweep the elevator lobbies, and mop up the spills; but are there other maintenance items I may be forgetting?”

In fact, a maintenance plan is much more than occasional spot cleaning. It’s a comprehensive strategy designed to keep a parkade operational and structurally sound. Of course the primary purpose is to prevent structural degradation of a parking asset, but maintenance plans can also help keep parkades operating at optimum efficiency.

Physical Maintenance

What does a maintenance plan involve? The most obvious elements…

Our Campus does not receive the revenue from parking tickets our enforcement staff issue.  We contract with a 3rd party to provide ticket administration and collection.  How common is this arrangement in the campus world?

Do you contract out your ticket administration?

Do you receive all or a portion of the ticket revenue?

Do you have a 3rd party doing your ticket collection or how do you manage outstanding tickets (or is this an issue)?

Pauline Tessier, University of Regina

E-mail: pauline.tessier@uregina.ca

Montreal, November 9, 2015—VINCI Park, an established Canadian company with more than 1,800 employees and 600 parking facilities under management, will be rolling out a new identity in the next few weeks: Indigo. This new brand, accompanied by the tagline MAKING SPACE FOR THE FUTURE, is a strong indication of the direction the company is taking with the deployment of new technologies associated with individual mobility. More than just a place to park, Indigo parking facilities will be connected and will gradually offer the possibility of reserving a space and paying with a mobile app. The introduction of digital services includes the stepped-up installation of electric charging stations and bicycle parking spaces, for example. The introduction of the Indigo brand follows a major transaction completed in June 2014 in which two French companies, Ardian and Crédit Agricole Assurances, acquired a 75% stake in the company.

For Louis Jacob, the company’s executive vice-president, “Indigo is part of an overall approach to mobility. The current services will develop quickly to create hubs where users will not only find a suitable, accessible and safe parking space more easily, but they’ll also be able to plan how they will get around more efficiently.” With the growing number of vehicles in urban centres, Indigo is seeking to provide quick access to popular parking sites and thereby offer a solution that improves individual mobility.

In addition to having its headquarters in Montreal, Indigo is the major player in the Quebec parking industry. Indigo manages a large number of well-known parking facilities in Quebec as well as in Canada’s largest cities. Examples include Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Jean Lesage and Pearson international airports in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto respectively, as well as the Bell Centre in Montreal and the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.

Indigo is part of a global…

The News Wheel | Nov 3 | https://thenewswheel.com/canadian-condos-offer-free-nissan-leafs-if-tenants-buy-parking-spaces/

One Toronto real estate company is taking a drastic step in condominium purchasing incentives by offering new residents a free Nissan LEAF if the resident buys a parking space equipped with an EV charging station along with the condo.

The company, Bside at Minto Westside, is partnering with Nissan Canada to offer these vehicles in “an unprecedented move towards sustainability in the Toronto condo market.” Apparently, Bside thinks that condos in Toronto currently lack the infrastructure to deal with electric vehicles.

Wells Baker, Director of Conservation and Sustainable Design at Minto, said, “The majority of high-rise buildings are faced with the challenge of overcoming a lack of infrastructure and space required for transformers needed to install electrical vehicle chargers. Bside is aiming to set a new benchmark in Toronto. It’s being developed with a dedicated transformer for EV chargers as well as space to add additional chargers as demand grows.”

Of course, if the infrastructure is built up across Toronto for electric vehicles, Nissan (whose LEAF is the number-one-selling EV in Canada) can only stand to gain, especially as the company continues to improve its electric vehicles and EV technology.

As Steven Rhind, Nissan Canada’s director of marketing, said, “The added incentive of offering an all-electric Nissan LEAF to buyers is exceptional.”

Many parking-related discussions are about parking fees and about costs of (building and maintaining) parking facilities.  The importance of parking is widely recognized, but car drivers are reluctant to pay even a small amount of money for parking. But when paid parking is introduced or parking fees are increased, it appears that the price-elasticity of parking demand is low.

In the heated debate about parking you will find on one side the representatives of retail-organizations, proclaiming that every cent spent on parking fees is too much and is chasing customers away. At the other side of the spectrum there will be parking operators declaring that free parking does not exist, and that parking fees are necessary to achieve a profitable business result.

Very few of these discussions are based upon research-supported facts. That is not so strange; quantitative research on this matter is rather scarce, and the results are not generally known.

This article will give some research-funded food for thought on the value of parking.

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