Let’s all be positive

Parking & Property 2017: The perception of parking has to change - Think of it as ‘The Negative Parking Agenda vs the Positive Parking Agenda’

Whether it’s on-street parking enforcement, congestion in off-street parking facilities, confusion about how to pay, or even just the frustration of trying to find a parking space, this all adds up in the mind of the consumer to a negative experience. Parking is important because parking is an issue that plays on the minds of people when deciding where to visit. A negative experience or perception can lead to more online shopping, more out-of-town retail park visits, and ultimately fewer town or city centre visitors. This means a positive town centre experience starts and ends with negative experiences, all because of parking.

The total value of the UK retail sector is £330bn, while the UK parking sector is valued at £3bn. With so much at stake, and so many businesses and jobs dependent on town or city centre access, finding positive upgrades and alternatives to the continued long-term perception of the ‘Negative Parking Agenda’ is a challenge for placemakers and the private sector alike. 

There are over 37m vehicles registered for use on Britain’s roads, and in 2016, a record 3.3m more were registered in a single year. Like it or not, car use remains high, and modal shift away from car access into town centres is still proving to be a slow burn.

What’s driving the Negative Parking Agenda?

The economics of parking are based on simple facts; parking is not a God-given right. It is a service or amenity, with significant capital and operating costs, and with demand and supply-based pricing. However, the combined impacts of parking congestion, parking fees and enforcement charges fall directly on to consumers, workers, supply chain drivers, businesses visitors and tourists – who naturally voice their frustrations, and therein lies one of the main drivers of the negative parking perception.

Parking payments, enforcement and general management that ensures safety and improves the street environment are key features of places where parking availability and demand outstrips supply, namely our town and city centres.

Shopping centres have significant off-street facilities, some with the latest consumer-friendly pay-on-exit systems, and yet they are unable to avoid the peak time congestion that can turn a shopping trip into a frustrating episode. Local authorities operate both off-street and on-street parking, with many of the same challenges as the private sector, but also the complex field of highway management that includes parking information systems. Both private and public operators make significant infrastructure investments.

All too often, capital investment decisions on payment systems and parking space information sharing have been made with revenue or regulatory concerns overriding the needs of the consumer. As with most capital investments, the life-cycle period does not lend itself to rapid change, and the lack of common parking industry standards can make it easier to decide on less expensive, less consumer-friendly systems. 

That perception has a major negative impact for the economic and social health of UK town and city centres.

So, what is the Positive Parking Agenda?

Putting the consumer first is essential, as these are our visitors, our residents, our shoppers, workers and investors. Parking needs to be re-framed as an amenity, and one that is as frictionless as possible.

1. Frictionless parking is when the customer…

1. Can easily find an available parking space while on the move
2. Is not limited by a pay & display fixed period
3. Is offered pay-on-exit payment rather than buying ‘blocks’ of time
4. Has business-incentives that reduce parking cost and/or add promotional benefits
5. Has incentives to make off-peak visits, ie park longer for less, or VIP access etc.

2. Timely information, easily discovered

If you look at parking as part of the overall place experience, for many people access to parking information is an essential element in the overall customer journey, which commences well before the actual physical journey.

Decisions by consumers are made with the information available to them. But parking information is usually missing! From breakfast to bedtime, the many stages of the customer journey are the biggest opportunity to connect with users, and parking space information is vital content that needs to be discovered.

To do this, parking information must be presented in a real-time, personalised and relevant way. In other words, timely parking information should be part of the digital experience that consumers and retailers are now becoming adept at working with.

This may require investment in marketing communications resources, but it is an investment that is already being made by businesses, shopping centres and place managers, so why not connect parking information to the existing flow of information? For instance, Google Maps (and other such platforms) already offers tailored directions to smartphone users. If parking information were to be made available to become part of that search result, that would have a mass impact.

3. Involving retailers in sharing the end-user parking costs

This is parking validation, a mysterious dark art to some, light at the end of the tunnel for others. In the UK, the user bears the majority of the cost of parking. The exceptions are when local authorities or shopping centres offer such things as ‘Free After 3’ or similar temporary initiatives. 

There are also some shopping centres and supermarkets, even a few market towns, that offer a simple short-stay refund to their shoppers for all or part of the cost of parking. However, these initiatives are small in comparison with the overall parking charges absorbed by shoppers. 

Retailers must consider that parking is part of their customer experience, and that they, too, must bear some responsibility towards it by working with parking operators.

Parking validation is a US approach to parking charges whereby the retailer ‘validates’ the shopper’s parking ticket, thus sharing or fully covering the cost. This is a result of towns and cities seeing parking as a customer amenity, or as a business support policy, that allows town centre businesses to compete with the free parking available to out-of-town retail park shoppers. In a sense, retailers in the US use parking validation as a customer loyalty and reward tool, often allocating the costs to their marketing budgets.

With the massive uptake of smartphones in the UK, there exists the opportunity to introduce a digital version of parking validation. But do we just need another app? Obviously not, or it would already exist. The answer may lie in establishing some common standards for these to be built on.

4. Parking payment made easier 

Hopefully, the next couple of years will see the end of off-street pay & display as a means of payment, ending the era of telling consumers how long they can spend shopping or visiting a place. And wouldn’t it be great if on-street parking payment went from the current confusion of payment apps, cards or coins, to something built in to your vehicle, just like satnav and assisted-parking systems. There are a number of cities across Europe that have piloted these ideas. BMW, VW and Volvo all have links with pay-by-mobile systems and are now integrating them into their vehicles.

Common standards for storing and sharing data on parking would allow this approach to become mainstream more quickly. Open data for use with in-car systems, and stronger bonds between place management and parking, would support the move towards a positive, frictionless parking experience. This discussion on standards is already happening in a number of forums. Standards are being developed in Europe and the US. Working examples of what is possible are already live in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In the era of Smart Cities thinking, the Internet of Things and ubiquitous mobile connected devices, the solution may take the form of a multi-function mobile application. This would most likely be a type of app specification that would work in any in-car system or other mobile device such as a smartphone or satnav. On this issue, the parking industry must work with the mobile industry, the major search engine providers and the card payment sector representatives.

5. Not all parking barriers move up and down!

Perhaps the biggest barrier of all to achieving frictionless parking as the normal customer experience, is the lack of a common set of data and system standards for parking information sharing and most importantly, for payments. IPIPS is a European initiative that is doing just this. Linked with the data standards, it will define standards for communication between parking and the payment industry. The first IPIPS standards are already live, and more are on the way.

What can you do? 

This is a strategic journey to embrace the Positive Parking Agenda. It involves developing the consumer-focussed proposition with those partnerships that are already on that journey, namely the retail and leisure sector, property owners, shopping centres, local authorities and business-led partnerships. It involves the parking sector reaching out and talking with car manufacturers, the mobile telecommunications industry, payment providers and the people that manage places.

These three objectives will support that strategic journey:

1. Consumer experience as a key focus across parking services sector development
2. Partnerships with the retail and leisure sector, property owners/shopping centres, local authorities parking and highways teams, the automotive and mobile telecommunications sectors, and payment providers
3. Participation in tech-innovation and data management circles to explore a common industry standard.

Guy Douglas is partnerships director at Clockwork City. He is a place manager who has a focus on the role of digital technology in the citizen-centric experience of town and city centres as places. Douglas is an advocate of cross-sector partnership development to bring about positive change in the consumer experience of parking. He also managed a municipal parking authority for City of Fairbanks, Alaska.