And here comes the Parking Revolution!

Television New Zealand missed the point here with this news item.  Its not that the car park has sensors or there are no barriers or its a Pay by Phone car park site alone, no this is the first 'dynamically priced' car park in NZ.

Now most people wont understand what that means but they need to because this means you are now only ever going to pay for parking, exactly what it is worth!  No more over-priced or under-priced parking, just parking charged at the correct value.  Wow.

Dynamic pricing in parking means that the price will move with the demand, that is, if the car park is empty, the price will drop and if the car park is full, the price will rise.

I said this was a revolution.  How is this a revolution I hear you ask?  Well, in two ways it is a huge change in the parking industry and the consumers need to note this.

One, all organisations that don't use this method of charging will be found out.  They will be identified as lazy or just not caring enough about the user to amend the prices to actually what the parking, on that day, in that location, is worth.  Those that act like a monopoly will be forced eventually to change or hey will suffer ridicule from the public.

Two, the public will not have parking to use as its subject of folly any more.  The emotion that most people attach to parking will be removed.  The emotion is attached to parking because some organisations that manage parking have mis-managed the pricing of it.  Ask yourself, if an organisation just adds CPI (inflation index) to a price, is there really competition here, are we as consumers really getting the best price and is the inflation adjustment related to anything other than revenue gathering?

In a fully functioning market where consumers get the best price related to what they want to buy, that is low prices if they want a slap up job or the best price for the best widget, parking in some quarters has been a fixed price, one price for all and unrelated to the value you get for the time in that car park   No wonder everyone has been emotional about parking.  Amend the price to relate it to demand, like almost every thing we buy in the world today, from petrol to broccoli, and people will understand why they are paying the price they do, and that will remove the emotion.  We may not like the price but we will understand it and who doesn't like to get  a bargain, especially in parking.

And here comes the revolution.


Read the Story and Watch the Video Here.