Case Study: Calgary

Calgary is the third largest municipality in Canada, home to 1.3 million people. The downtown area is headquarters to of 132 corporate head offices, which employ approximately 140,000 people. ParkPlus manages almost 20,000 parking spaces across the city, including parkades, surface lots, and on-street spaces.

In 2007, Calgary deployed the ParkPlus system for all of its parking operations. ParkPlus provides Calgary with a fully integrated parking management solution based on pay-by-plate and licence plate recognition (LPR) technology, which covers pay stations, mobile payment, permits and contracts, enforcement, citation tracking, and data gathering and analysis.

Since then, the technology has advanced a great deal and our partnership has flourished. The scope of operations now includes:

• 7 million+ transactions

• Over 137,000 cell phone accounts

• 42,000 app downloads

• 747 pay stations

• 12 parkades and 32 surface lots

• 5 million vehicles scanned for enforcement

• 150,000 tickets issued for non-payment

Payment methods include multi-space meters, text messaging, interactive voice response calls, online, and in-app. By using multi-space meters, and offering a variety of payment methods, hardware requirements have decreased and Calgary has seen a 35% savings in capital costs and maintenance expenses.

Enforcement is done using a combination of mobile photo enforcement, gated systems with fixed cameras, and foot patrol officers. Each of these options includes photos of the infracting vehicle, capturing both the licence plate and exterior details to prove location. Using mobile enforcement has been 38% more effective (compared to than relying on traditional foot patrol) as more violations can be captured and citations issued with fewer staff. This has a clear benefit to any municipality or owner-operators as overhead costs associated with staffing will decrease.

ParkPlus enforcement works by capturing payment and location details, and then matching this information with payment records. The quality of evidence has increased dramatically, and in turn reduced disputes and the number of cases that are sent through the judicial system. Calgary has seen a 60% reduction of admin and prosecution costs since implementing ParkPlus.

Considering the ease of payment options, as well as the high likelihood of getting caught for a payment violation, Calgary has seen a 19% increase in payment compliance at ParkPlus controlled lots and areas.

Customer satisfaction has also benefitted from implementing ParkPlus. Across all of these transactions, we maintain a high standard of customer satisfaction. In fact, our latest ratings have us at 94% overall customer satisfaction and 96% satisfaction among mobile users.

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