Super Parking in the Super Bowl City

By, David Cummins, vice president parking solutions, Xerox Corporation

Anybody who has ever been to Indy knows it’s a super city. They didn’t need the NFL to validate that. Even with Peyton Manning hurt and the Indianapolis Colts are having a disappointing year, the eyes of the world will still be on The Circle City as they host Super Bowl XLVI (that’s forty-six for you non-Roman numeral counting experts). More than 100 million people will watch the big game on February 5^th, that’s about one third of the US population. The game will be broadcast out to 225 countries around the world.

Indianapolis is also home to a super cool parking program.  It really is. Granted, parking is not as sexy as hosting or winning the Super Bowl, but when you talk about state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, leading the pack – Indy’s parking operations are second-to-none.

All of their parking meters accept credit cards. You can feed all the meters through pay by phone. And well more than half of the system will soon be part of a smartphone app that directs you to a space.  Sensors in spaces will relay that info to an app in real time to let you know where the next closest parking space is. How cool is that! No other city has this breadth and depth of parking technology.

So what does all this mean for John Q. Driver? Less time looking for a spot and more time enjoying their destination. No need to have a pocket full of quarters weighting you down. No need to remember to run back to the meter to feed it – you get a reminder on your phone, you punch a few buttons on your cell phone and you’re good to go for another few hours. If you’re lucky enough to secure a Super Bowl ticket, you can try it for yourself.

Indy does pretty well too. With Xerox running the program they have fewer headaches and hassles, not to mention fewer expenses. So they see an increase in net revenue. Now that’s a win-win if I ever saw one!