Congested inner cities - change is needed in terms of sustainable mobility. What infrastructure do we need?
Smart mobility needs infrastructure
The mobility revolution is in full swing: e-vehicles and car sharing are changing the face of inner-city transport. These concepts place new demands on the infrastructure due to the increasing need for e-charging stations and parking spaces. Space is already becoming scarce. Cars parked at the side of the road affect pedestrians and cyclists, and the lack of parking space leads to traffic searching for parking spaces, which pollutes the air and the environment.
In order to enable a sustainable mobility transition, the various mobility options must be linked in order to relieve traffic congestion and enable a switch to more sustainable forms of mobility.
This requires hubs that bring together the mobility mix, consisting of micro mobility, car sharing, e-charging stations, parking and other offers: Mobility Hubs.
But where can these mobility hubs be created and how can they be used?
From car park to mobility hub
Holistically conceived mobility hubs form hubs for parking facilities, sharing models and public transport. This enables a flexible combination of different uses. This creates the basis for more micro mobility fleets and an improved e-car charging infrastructure.
The already scarce space in city centres rarely allows for the creation of new areas that can represent such mobility hubs. But this is not even necessary, because through the efficient use of existing space, these mobility hubs can be created without large infrastructure projects.
Smart parking management can create a mobility hub out of every parking space, tailored to the needs of the surrounding area.
The key here will be the digitalisation of parking space administration: For example, empty supermarket and office parking spaces - previously blocked by barriers - can be made available outside of business hours and in the future serve to link different mobility offers in and outside of the city.
Smart parking management
The question about the means of transport is no longer just: "Car or train?" Forms of mobility are becoming more flexible: the mobility hub is approached by car, the onward journey is made by S-Bahn and the last stretch is covered by an e-scooter or on foot. This requires linking the booking and payment processes of different providers. This applies to parking, public transport and, for example, the scooter.
This can be made possible through smart, barrier-free parking with number plate recognition. How does this work? For example, licence plate recognition detects vehicles as they enter and exit the car park and automatically compares the parking process with the public transport ticket stored in the system and settles the bill. Commuters can plan their journeys easily. Urban traffic is relieved.
This also allows the integration of sharing models. Where car sharing fleets previously had to stop in front of closed barriers, the barrier-free parking technology allows more parking spaces to be used for car sharing.
Background info: Digital and barrier-free parking technology
To enable mobility hubs, a system is needed to link the different mobility services in order to make the user experience straightforward. This is made possible by systems based on number plate control without parking barriers. The smart parking systems, which combine minimal hardware and cloud-based software, digitally represent the entire parking process and enable 24/7 control of the parking space. Classic barriers, sensors, control staff and paper tickets are no longer necessary.
When entering and exiting the car park, license plates are recorded in compliance with the German Data Protection Act (DSGVO). Software runs in the background, linking parking transactions and payment.
This eliminates immense costs for car park operators in the acquisition and maintenance of their parking technology, because digital parking systems are cheaper and less maintenance-prone, as only the licence plate scanner has to be installed in analogue form. This is robust and is mounted several metres above the roadway, which also protects it from vandalism. A 24/7 maintenance service, as needed for gated parking areas, is no longer necessary.
Unlike conventional parking sensors, licence plate recognition-based parking technology allows for maximum parking time monitoring and identifies parking violations directly, eliminating the need to patrol the area.
Parking spaces can no longer be considered in isolation, but must be integrated as a component in digital mobility concepts.
The integration of partners to pay parking costs via app, to use car sharing models or to rent an e-scooter for the onward journey in the inner city area will increasingly establish itself as standard. These requirements must be met by parking technology, which is the only way to create mobility hubs without placing a large financial burden on the federal and state governments.
Because sustainable mobility cannot simply be decreed - it must convince through a customer-friendly offer and smart use of available resources!
The Munich-based start-up Peter Park System GmbH has taken on the mobility revolution and is enabling the digitalization of parking spaces. With intelligent parking management software and automatic license plate recognition for cities and private parking operators, parking processes are paperless and barrier-free. The peak traffic periods at P+R parking facilities at entry and exit are relieved by barrier-free flow. The newfound traffic and utilization data provides the insight needed to tailor mobility and service offerings to meet demand.
