Connecting intelligent parking meters through a Digital City network to a centralised parking management system can deliver immediate and measurable benefits:

• New conveniences for visitors and residents are created by enabling flexible payments: credit cards, prepaid parking cards or cell phone payments.  Multi-lingual instructions improve usability. SMS messages can warn parkers of imminent violations.
  
  
• Increased revenues created from the introduction of flexible rate structures such as time of use charging.  Premium charges for remote payments, for example, allow customers to avoid penalties and have been proven to increase overall revenues while enhancing parker satisfaction. Less meter downtime increases revenues and profitability.
  
  
• Significant operational savings can be created from features like automatic broken meter identification and automatic daylight savings time adjustment.
  
  
• More efficient parking enforcement is achievable when violation notifications are sent to patrolling enforcement officers in real time.
  
  
• Less lost revenue is normally seen due to credit card fraud.

These benefits invariably create a solid financial APS business case for any municipality.  Payback times for the capital investment are often seen within 2 years or less.  If the parking system can leverage a multi-use Digital City metro-scale broadband network, the business case is significantly enhanced by lower CAPEX, greater reliability, and significantly less operational costs than, say, a telecommunications SIM card-based alternative.  Technology Partners can help you evaluate your Automated Parking System requirements and implementation alternatives.