Parking fees – a powerful policy tool
Parking fees are a powerful and popular tool to manage parking occupancies. With fees it is important to consider the different types of parking users and find a balance between a liveable and accessible public urban space. Sometimes, after a trial, it becomes clear that the chosen tariff model is not optimal. With Monit Data’s Parking Monitor you have the tools to simulate different fees and immediately see the impact on parking occupancy and revenues.
It was reported in the local news this month. The city of The Hague in The Netherlands is stopping a trial for a fixed daily parking fee on certain streets. With this tariff model, the parking fee was 50 Euro whether parking a few minutes or the whole day. Residents were positive about this day pass because parking occupancy in their neighborhood had decreased. However, local businesses were less satisfied with this pricing model as it resulted in fewer customers.
The city of The Hague is now looking for a solution where the hourly fee increases the longer one parks, a so-called “progressive rate.” The goal is to set these rates in such a way that it encourages to use parking garages instead of parking on the street.
Parking fees as a policy tool
This trial in The Hague is a good example of using parking fees as a powerful tool in mobility and parking policies. It also highlights the complex challenges in parking, which involves the interests of residents, visitors, and local businesses. This challenge also involves striving for a balance between liveability and accessibility within the limited public space of an urban environment.
It is also demonstrated in this trial that alternative tariff schedules sometimes do not result in an optimal outcome for the goals set out in advance. Therefore, it is important to test the results of changed parking fees against these goals. This requires a good understanding of the actual parking occupancy, and how the fees translate in costs and thus parking behaviour.
Grip on parking tariff models with Monit Data
Monit Data provides solutions to better manage parking tariffs as a tool for your mobility policyies. These tools are available within the Parking Monitor, our cloud-based software suite. The Parking Monitor transforms raw data from your parking systems into valuable information. The Parking Monitor is flexible, and allows you to select the modules that address your specific requirements.
To help you to use parking tariffs as tool in managing parking occupancy, the following modules are available:
Rates audit Compare different tariff schedules, including those of various parking facilities. Like the example of the city of The Hague, how can you set parking fees to make it more attractive to park in a garage than on-street after a certain duration?
Scenario simulation Parking rates are not only a tool to manage parking occupation, but are often an important source of income for municipalities. In this way parking helps to enable public services for citizens. With Scenario simulation, you can model the impact of different rates and parking occupancies on parking revenues in before implementing them.
Parking Analysis After implementing new rates, you can see the impact on parking usage by using occupancy figures within the Parking Analysis module. This gives a very short feedback cycle, thus allowing for effective adjustments where needed.
Scan car analysis With this module, data from the scan car often already driving in the city for enforcement can also be used to analyse parking occupancy.
All these modules are easily accessible online within the Parking Monitor within a single, clear central dashboard. Besides these modules, there are of course more available within the Parking Monitor to offer a multitude of parking insights..
The Parking Monitor is the fully integrated solution for your parking policies, as well as financial and operational management of parking facilities. Contact Monit Data to learn more.
