Addressing urban parking challenges with smart solutions
The Challenge
Cities worldwide grapple with the daunting challenge of accommodating the burgeoning parking needs of urban freight and delivery vehicles, exacerbating issues of traffic congestion, urban mobility, air quality, and overall citizen and commercial driver well-being, particularly concerning last mile deliveries.
The escalating demand for parking spaces dedicated to last mile delivery accentuates problems such as vehicles parking without permits or overstaying in loading zones, alongside the inherent difficulties and expenses associated with parking enforcement in these areas.
This conundrum contributes to the persistent congestion, pollution, and a lack of environmental regulations. Compounded by a dearth of data for comprehensive analysis and optimisation of public/private space usage, cities face low parking turnover and the arduous task of locating available parking spots, further complicating the situation.
The Solution
Parkunload, founded in 2017 presents a comprehensive digital solution to tackle the challenges posed by urban freight and delivery vehicle parking. Through a fully digital platform, the App enables the creation, regulation, control, and optimisation of short-term parking zones specifically tailored for loading and unloading activities, as well as for promoting local commerce.
In collaboration with EIT Urban Mobility, Parkunload has yielded significant progress in addressing urban parking challenges in the city of Torrelavega (Cantabria) in Spain. To adapt to the city's requirements, Parkunload has expanded its capabilities with tailored add-on features designed to further optimise parking management and enforcement. Some of the features promote sustainable delivery practices by commercial drivers while streamlining enforcement processes for parking agents.
Overall, the pilot project carried out by Parkunload fostered a culture of compliance and accountability among drivers, contributing to a more orderly and efficient urban parking ecosystem. It also facilitated the work for parking agents and provided cities with information and tools to analyse parking patterns and plan interventions.
Making an impact
The city of Torrelavega has launched an innovative concept of shared loading zones for both commercial and private vehicles. During early morning hours, until 11h, only commercial vehicles are authorised to park for 30 minutes in the loading zones, but later private vehicles can also park in the smart zone for 90 minutes and the vehicles owned by residents can park up to 120 minutes to promote and facilitate access to the local commerce.
In this project, a new version of Parkunload app has been designed, developed, and released to enable paying a reduced fee to cancel the parking fine, according to the city’s parking bylaws that will be published in the second quarter of 2024. In this context, a web form is also available to cancel parking penalty notes online.
Parkunload has designed, developed, and launched a new version of its mobile app for parking enforcement agents, that has also required upgrading the web-based BackOffice for the parking authorities and Big Data Analytics for city planners.
Both commercial and citizens have positively received the digital transformation of the loading zone with a shared-use because it has an impact improving city logistics, as well as promoting local commerce with short-stay free-of-charge parking zones distributed in the city centre.
Lessons learnt
Several of the factors listed below played crucial roles in driving Parkunload's significant and impactful adoption:
- Parkunload App is mandatory for use by parking agents and the city to regulate and control 31 shared-loading zones with 110 parking spaces
- Parkunload has been integrated via API with the city services
- Parkunload’s platform already enables paying a reduced fee to cancel parking fines due to overstaying in the loading zone
- The city of Torrelavega is still using the App and will start issuing parking penalty notes, according to the city’s parking byelaws starting to be effective from the second quarter of 2024.