Unable to find parking spots in Dubai? Here's the way out

Dubai - Several cities around the world are already beginning to trial self-parking vehicles, specialised AV parking lots and robotic parking valets.

With Dubai's inevitable shift towards autonomous vehicles (AVs), transport specialists and urban planners are calling on property developers to start thinking ahead and adopt smart solutions for parking.

Experts who attended the third Annual Smart Parking conference in Dubai on Wednesday said the future of parking requirements is expected to be significantly influenced by the arrival of AVs and eventual growth of hybrid and electric vehicles.

The call is also in line with the government's recent directive to make it mandatory for developers to integrate parking space for electric cars in the construction of upcoming buildings.

Early this year, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) launched the initial phase of its Smart Parking Project, covering controlled parking areas in Al Rigga and World Trade Centre. Through this project, information is provided to motorists before driving to those areas about the number of vacant slots in public car parks using the RTA app.

Several cities around the world are already beginning to trial self-parking vehicles, specialised AV parking lots and robotic parking valets. "Dubai is still in the early stage but few things have started. We have a long way to go in terms of smart parking and we need to start placing the building blocks for the creation of smart parking system," Andrew Rippon, senior consultant of NXN (formerly NeXgen), told Khaleej Times. Rippon added that there should be a repurpose of space in pursuing the next generation of parking garages.

Talking about the digital transformation of parking, Rippon said: "Smart parking is not just about the economics of the piece of land. It is more about efficiency, sustainability and value added revenue.

He added that smart parking is also about "dealing with increased operational complexity of smart cities and optimizing infrastructure and operations to take advantage of new technologies such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence."

Rippon said it is important to include smart parking enablers such as electric vehicle charging stations, smart navigation inside the car park, and e-valet stations to let car park itself. For additional revenues, parking structures can also be converted to other uses when less parking is required due to constantly moving self-driving cars, he added.

"The deployment of sensor technologies will be at the core of the development of smart parking and this will eliminate human intervention, including in hiring many parking attendants and security staff, resulting in operational expense savings," he said.

Moving forward, Rippon said Dubai residents should now get familiarised with crypto currencies as this will change the payment system in smart parking. "We should start accepting online payments, credit cards and Bitcoins and connect our existing systems together via blockchain," he explained.

Walkable cities are more liveable

While we still struggle with the usual traffic congestion and inadequate parking availability, a transport expert said the solution is not in the creation of super-highways and massive road networks but in making the city 'walkable'.

Martin Tillman, director of strategic planning and advisory at Aecom, said the cities that made it to top of the recent Global Liveability Report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit, are cities considered as "walkable."

During his talk at the third Annual Smart Parking conference on the topic of the impact of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on parking facilities, Tillman said AVs are not the solution to achieving 'Best City' status but the plan should be based on human scale first.

He explained that cities which scored high on the livable index were those which prioritised walking and cycling as the first and last mile solutions.

"People would say in the Middle East it is too hot to walk. But you can see people in Deira and CBD (central business districts) who are walking," Tillman said.

"The question is 'how do we make our cities more walkable and more livable going forward," he asked.

SMART PARKING ENABLERS

>Electric vehicle charging

>Navigation inside the car park

>New e-valet stations, where the car parks itself

>Parking structures that can be converted to other uses if/when less parking is required due to constantly circulating self driving Careems

>Access automation to account for the lack of a drivers to hand over tickets

>New revenue streams for parking structures

SMART PARKING WILL ELIMINATE

> On-site IT systems (just sensors and network)

> So many parking attendants

> Cash payments

> Payment controllers

> So many security staff

angel@khaleejtimes.com