By David Cummins, senior vice president and managing director, Parking and Justice Solutions, Xerox
No parking? No problem. New York is indeed the city that never sleeps. And – as The Chairman of the Board once pointed out – if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And it’s all true, particularly where parking is concerned.
At a press conference I attended recently in the Bronx, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced two pilot programs that will allow motorists to pay parking meters remotely and view real-time curbside parking availability all via an app on their phone or online.
In the first pilot, motorists can pay for metered parking via a smartphone app (PayByPhone), the internet or by telephone for 264 spaces along 18 blocks in the Bronx, as well as at the New York City Department of Transportation’s Belmont Municipal Parking Field. Need more time on the meter? No problem. The new technology will warn motorists when their time is about to expire via e-mail or text messages, and allow them to pay for additional time easily and quickly, up to the posted time limit.
The second pilot involves the analysis of various technologies for parking guidance – sensing and counting the number of occupied spaces in NYC and then using an app to direct drivers to the least congested blocks. Xerox is helping in that effort.
We’re very excited to be involved in this pilot. If you follow this blog, you may have noticed we’ve rolled out similar successful parking programs in Indianapolis and Los Angeles. The key to modernizing a parking program and making it great is to make parking simple – from finding a spot to paying for it. We’ve helped hundreds of governments around the world improve their parking programs and what New York is piloting could be life altering for drivers if adopted city-wide.
Who knows? You could find you’re king of the hill; top of the heap; and your little town blues melting away. New York is helping take the pain out of parking.
New York