Transforma Insights recently published a report on Parking Space Monitoring, which primarily focused on the current state and future prospects of IoT-based monitoring of parking spaces, used to provide drivers and owners with information on occupancy and availability, as well as supporting payment systems and access controls.
In this blog, we focus on the demand for, and benefits of, smart parking solutions along with certain barriers that limit their adoption. The concluding part of the blog focuses on the scope and the future of the parking space monitoring market.
With high rate of vehicle ownership and lack of parking spaces, it is becoming increasingly difficult to park one’s vehicles. Drivers spend a lot of time looking for parking spaces, which leads to high rate of congestion in cities, wastage of time and more emissions. For instance, on average, more than 25% of vehicles that are driven in major cities around the world are looking for a parking space, while 35% of the overall commute time is wasted in doing so. Europe is said to be short of 400,000 parking spaces, while there is an estimated shortage of 80 million parking spaces in China.
Smart parking solutions are being increasingly adopted to counter the issue of congestion. In some cases, this involves monitoring a specific space using short-range or wide area connectivity. In other cases, it may involve technologies such as RFID, ANPR cameras and cellular communications to monitor the entrance of parking garages. ANPR and RFID solutions are generally incorporated into confined spaces such as garages or parking lots, while cellular is used to monitor more spaces across the cities on a larger scale. For example, NewRiver, a UK based retail and leisure assets provider, has installed ANPR cameras to provide car-park managers with real-time data on usage and parking trends as well as improving compliance by providing notifications on overstays and non-payment of parking charges. On the other hand, the district of Nippes in Cologne, Germany has deployed overhead sensors to help provide information on available and occupied parking slots directly on-site at 27 central intersections.
One major limit on the potential for IoT-enabled parking space monitoring is the ongoing reduction in parking spaces, aimed at reducing car ownership, which will reduce emissions and promote sustainability. Governments across the world are planning to reduce vehicle ownership and the number of parking spaces, in order to promote the use of public transport. For instance, drivers in Amsterdam require a permit to access a particular parking space, whose price is being repeatedly increased by the government, which is planning to remove 11,200 parking spaces from the city by 2025. A similar trend is expected to show in the foreseeable future as governments plan to increase the cost of ownership of the vehicles and promote public transport for the citizens to commute from one place to another in order to reduce emissions and promote sustainability.
Most governments are limiting the building of new parking lots, which has further added to the problem. For instance, the Brazilian government is only allotting one parking space for every new household that is being made in the country.
Apart from parking space crunch, the rise of micromobility schemes for shorter journeys and the growing use of autonomous and electric vehicles among citizens is further expected to hamper the adoption of these devices. A further barrier to adoption will be the fact that low-income countries will find these solutions unaffordable.
Despite the concerns, IoT-based smart parking solutions are expected to gradually grow over the next decade due to growing vehicle ownership and rapid urbanisation, particularly in developing countries. The total number of devices will reach 5.13 million in 2032, up from 2.53 million in 2022 – growing at a CAGR of 7%, with Europe and North America being the biggest markets. More cities are expected to adopt these smart parking solutions as they are said to reduce emissions by more than 2% in Europe and can save drivers up to 20 minutes each day. Implementing these has also been shown to reduced traffic volume by 8%, carbon emissions by 40%, distance travelled by 30% and time spent in parking by 43%.
Leading organisations across the globe, such as Cleverciti, Jieshun, Inrix Parking, and ParkU are rapidly expanding their portfolio and technological offerings to cater to the growing demand of parking space monitoring solutions from the industry. Transforma Insights report on Parking Space Monitoring further highlights and analyses all of the key trends identified above, and looks at the capabilities and offerings of all the above leading providers of IoT parking space monitoring solutions.
