After
attending a recent New Zealand Parking Conference this (southern) spring, I was
heartened to see that some Councils are working diligently toward a new future
well with a much deeper knowledge of how parking contributes to the vitality of
a city or town. They are taking on board
the fast intrusion of new the technologies with the enthusiasm of a kid with
that latest fishing rod - they know its god but are not quite sure how to get
the best out of it. The strides new
technology is making to parking around the world are immense and permanent. It
is not the same business it was 10 or even 5 years ago.
Some
Councils are progressing faster than others, and their cities and towns are
benefiting from the support to their economic vitality a modern parking system
can provide. But we don’t know who these
Councils are as there has been no way to measure how all Councils are doing
against each other and against the major players in the market. We can’t tell how or if a city's and town's
parking resources are benchmarked against the rest and how they are actually
being managed. But we can now….sort of.
Benchmarking
is not a dirty word, for obvious improvement and quality reasons. Also since the national environment is now
ranking everything such as schools and District Health Board services, it seems
like a natural progression that we should rank our Council parking
systems. As Councils collectively around
the country manage a staggeringly large number of car parks for their
communities and take in a large amount of parking revenue, there is a very real
opportunity to manage this resource in a manner that provides positive returns
to the businesses, the community and the ratepayers by simply doing things
better and learning off those who do it better.
So why not rank them!
Those in the best space to understand what
Councils are doing in the field of technology and modern parking methodologies
are the service providers. They will
visit each Council and talk to them at events like conferences, where they can
form an opinion on how disposed each Council seems to improving what they are
providing. So we surveyed them.
The results of the survey, conducting shortly
after the New Zealand Parking Association conference has been positive in that
most respondents wanted the outcomes to be aimed at improvement. I need to say that very few of the comments
were negative, which is a great place for the industry to start.
Also please note that these companies did NOT
want to do this openly for obvious reasons.
The questions had not been split between the
parking operations and the parking enforcement wings of Councils as some of the
smaller Councils don’t split the two specialties anyway.
The questions
that were asked were to provide an opinion on how each Council appeared in,
·
OPENNESS
TO TRY new parking systems
· UNDERSTAND new parking systems, methodologies and technologies
· STAY INFORMED about new parking systems, methodologies and technologies
· Offer VALUE for parking spend by Councils
· Appear to be well CONTROLLED & ORGANISED
· UNDERSTAND new parking systems, methodologies and technologies
· STAY INFORMED about new parking systems, methodologies and technologies
· Offer VALUE for parking spend by Councils
· Appear to be well CONTROLLED & ORGANISED
All of these questions were asked from the
perspective of someone who views most Councils and in some cases can review New
Zealand’s Councils against world standards.
Results
The
results show some interesting features, namely that when the results are marked
out of a possible 4, the industry average is 2.4 which means that most of the
City Council portion of the parking industry is above or close to average. We’re not sure if this is a good result or
not but as time goes on, we can view the trends to see if our Councils are
improving their service offer. I suspect
that if I was facing ratepayers and businesses that I would want my parking
operation to be supporting economic vitality and community access with much
more than an average result!
A
handful of Councils have achieved above a 75% result in the opinion of the
respondents. It’s probably not a coincidence
that these organisations have a very proactive and positive approach to what
parking may deliver to their city, Auckland Transport recently completing its
Draft Unitary Plan, Christchurch City recently completed its new Central City
Parking Plan and Rotorua experimenting with solutions around its retail
parking.
Honourable
mentions go to Invercargill City Council who respondents say asked some good
questions of the survey contributors at conference and New Plymouth City
Council who are also spending time on trying to get their solutions right for
the community.
Some
of the responses have been interesting, when asked for some simple
thoughts. A collection of those are
below,
1.
What
best describes the biggest issue you have with Councils parking teams?
·
Operations
oriented (as in council centric) rather than customer oriented.
·
The
linking of vehicle sensing technologies with customer parking payment
solutions. The 2 do not need to be linked.
· Budget.
The old adage "you get what you pay for" very much applies here. Also, an inability or unwillingness to hold suppliers accountable for poor product/service supplied.
·
Lack
of understanding when it comes to technology.
· Difficult
to access a decision maker, and council officers pretend they are decision
makers.
· No
issues.
· They
do not understand how technology can manage utilisation. Only pay lip service
to this.
·
Wasteful
procurement methods.
·
Tender
process too long.
·
Lack
of general computer knowledge.
2.
What is the biggest change you would like
Councils to make to improve their parking value offer to their city or town?
·
Raise
the price of parking and use time variable price parking so that there is
always some proportion (say15%) available parking.
· A more aggressive approach to encouraging the uptake of Smartphone solutions for payment of parking by customers.
· Directed enforcement will provide the opportunity to achieve optimal compliance/turnover. Increase the infringement fees too - they simply are not a deterrence.
· Use the data from technology to improve the customer experience, determined planning.
· Think like business people instead of just bums on seats.
· Make on-street parking more affordable with shorter time limits then utilise major car parks for longer term use. On-street short stay, off-street long stay.
· Focus on utilisation not revenue. Abolish the tender system and let cities chose providers as the private sector would.
· Improve their procurement practices to stop wasting money.
· More openness to new technologies.
· Internal training improved.
· A more aggressive approach to encouraging the uptake of Smartphone solutions for payment of parking by customers.
· Directed enforcement will provide the opportunity to achieve optimal compliance/turnover. Increase the infringement fees too - they simply are not a deterrence.
· Use the data from technology to improve the customer experience, determined planning.
· Think like business people instead of just bums on seats.
· Make on-street parking more affordable with shorter time limits then utilise major car parks for longer term use. On-street short stay, off-street long stay.
· Focus on utilisation not revenue. Abolish the tender system and let cities chose providers as the private sector would.
· Improve their procurement practices to stop wasting money.
· More openness to new technologies.
· Internal training improved.
Conclusion
Parking
is always an emotional topic when it actually doesn’t need to be. It is generally simple economics, supply v
demand. As an industry it has had a
‘state-control like’ price structure for decades, which is why many people do
not respect the industry – they don’t see the value in it like it was a market
priced litre of fuel. It is also touched
on the periphery by many and varied people, occupations and activities that
don’t understand how scientific it has actually now become.
It is
clear that the Council parking industry in New Zealand needs to improve, as
measured by the respondents to this survey, but the average is not bad. We suspect that the ratepayers and
communities of New Zealand would also see improvement as a necessary step for
vote ratepayer funds. We hope the
Councils take this information as a positive opportunity.
Parking
is not going to get any less important over the next 30 years and with some
Councils looking to maintain their current vehicle loads and to mode change the
growth from now and into the future from petrol to electric. It is clear we need to better understand how
to control and manage that contribution that Council parking makes to each
city.
Kevin
Warwood