Cities around the globe are growing year by year. This means that traffic coming in and out of the city is increasing rapidly. Because of this, cities are experiencing greater amounts of congestion, leading to higher pollution rates and a lot of stressed out people. It is estimated that approximately 30% of traffic is caused by people looking to find a parking spot.
The question remains: How can cities battle this increase in traffic and because of this, save money? Company INRIX has estimated what parking costs in 30 major cities across the globe. The result? Parking does not cost millions of dollars, but billions.
What troubles are drivers experiencing when looking for parking spots?
In a research INRIX conducted, 64% of drivers say to experience a feeling of stress when looking for a parking space. Next to that, 20% even got into an argument over the past year because of parking troubles.
However, the drivers are not only stressed. 40% of respondents in the research have said to avoid shops in the past year because of the parking situation at said shops. This means that the problem of parking does not only have an impact on stress or pollution, but also on local enterprises and the economy. According to The Times, 26% of pollution is caused by transport, meaning it plays a big role in polluting in general.
Which cities are suffering the most globally?
Growing cities worldwide are experiencing huge challenges when it comes to parking. A couple of examples are Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Because of the influx of inhabitants, these cities have had to up parking prices in the center of town drastically in order to make sure that people will park further out of town. This is a good solution to quickly reduce traffic within the city, but increases costs for inhabitants and makes the city less attractive to visitors. (Rapid Growth, 2015)
What is the cost for cities and drivers and how can they prevent it?
In the United Kingdom and Germany people waste an average of 42,5 hours per annum per person when looking for a parking bay. This results in approximately 5 billion liters of fuel being used only when looking for a parking spot in the UK and Germany alone. As you can see these amounts mentioned above are astronomically high, which leads to the question: What is the cost of all this in monies? Well, the economic cost of this in the UK alone is 23,3 billion GBP a year, whilst it costs the Germans 40,4 billion Euros per annum. (Inrix, 2017)
What are the solutions for these problems and how can they save cities a lot of money?
It is important to note that not all solutions work as well as they might look on first hand. Take free parking or building extra parking spaces for example. When using both techniques, the problem of searching for parking bays is not immediately solved. Next to that, the idea of banning vehicles completely from your city is also a temporary solution, by doing this you are moving the problem to a different area as cars will still be driving around. The only difference is, that the vehicles will be driving in a different part of town. So, what does work?
A Smart Parking Technology such as Smart Parking Bay Sensors work to combat search times for drivers. The technology uses an app that gives you real-time information on the occupancy level of parking bays. The Smart Parking sensors send all the data to the app, so that the driver can navigate to a free parking bay without stress. Not only does using Smart Parking sensors help combat stress levels of drivers, but because it saves them time, it also saves the drivers fuel and thus money. It is estimated that the use of Parkeagle’s Smart Parking Sensors can save drivers up to 30% of time when looking for a parking spot, which can help cities save not millions, but billions.
The Smart Parking Technology used can be seen as a part of Smart Navigation. Read more about Smart Navigation.
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http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/growing-cities-parking-problems.aspx
http://inrix.com/press-releases/parking-pain-us/
