Every day, local authorities across the UK are faced with a thankless exercise. They try to balance the expectations of their constituents with the reality of delivering core services amidst a period of austerity, limited resources and sweeping societal change.
Parking remains a highly fractious topic as it often represents a significant income stream for authorities but the experiences that local residents, businesses, and visitors have when parking is often very poor. This experience is characterised by having difficulty locating a space, understanding local on-street restrictions and rigid tariff structures that don’t reflect how people need to park.
Struggling urban centres and high streets cite parking as a significant challenge, with the stress associated with finding and paying for parking linked to people avoiding local shops, increasingly turning to home delivery or even driving to retail parks.
We believe in a positive vision for parking, one that not only transforms experiences for motorists but also provides the digital infrastructure and insight for authorities to optimise their assets. With an integrated approach, that considers the needs of both user groups, a win-win scenario is possible and that’s what we call our Smart City Parking solution.
The Solution
In Harrogate, the AppyWay team encountered two local authorities, Harrogate Borough Council (HBC) and North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC), determined to improve the parking experiences for local residents, businesses and visitors as part of their wider economic investment strategy.
Our Smart City Parking solution is specifically designed to best serve the needs of those who need to park whilst providing a powerful kerbside management tool for local authorities to better manage and optimise their assets.
The project required close collaboration with two authorities, with Harrogate Borough Council responsible for the operation of off-street parking and North Yorkshire County Council being the Highways Authority and responsible for the provision of on-street parking.
The solution, launched publicly in January 2019 is a global first, and involved the installation of 2,156 smart sensors and the consolidation of digitised parking data, parking sensors, parking payments, ANPR barriers and linear pricing into a single solution for the two authorities that enabled a totally seamless experience for users of our mobile app.
The user experience for drivers is game-changing, allowing them to find available on-street or off-street parking with real-time availability and start and pay for parking sessions that end automatically when they drive away with a single click – something we call One Click Parking™. We also accomplished an entirely frictionless experience for drivers when using ANPR barrier car parks.
The local authorities are now able to see how their assets are consumed through our web-hosted analytics platform which exposes parking utilisation data for all on and off-street parking spaces thanks to our smart parking sensors.
The Benefits
Cost-effective
Convenient and cost-effective in-app payments save time and reduce the anxiety of needing to return to their vehicle before pay and display ticket expires.
Powerful utilisation
Powerful utilisation and revenue insights to enable data driven policy decisions.
21
of users save time finding a space
67
of users find it less stressful than displaying a ticket
89
of users find it more convenient than pay & display
43
of users say they stayed longer in Harrogate as a result of not worrying about ticket expiring
What They’re Saying
Thriving cities, from the kerb up
Ready to join the movement?
The kerb is our greatest untapped urban asset. AppyWay unlocks all its potential. Get in touch today and realise the opportunities right under your feet.
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