e-parking: an e-business platform for more efficient use of parking space resources

Transcription

1 e-parking: an e-business platform for more efficient use of parking space resources C. Ramírez EU Projects, SICE: Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, Spain Abstract Amongst the wide range of parking solutions that can contribute to reducing parking problems or regulate parking activities, e-parking looks at developing and applying an innovative e-business application for parking space optimisation. The purpose of this paper is to present the innovative e-business platform that has been developed by a transcross European consortium within the framework of the IST Information Society Technologies of the Vth framework programme. This paper will outline the sequence of all stages followed during the project, from user requirements to functional specifications and system development and implementation with particular emphasis on results achieved and scenarios of application. The developed platform provides a parking brokerage service that makes the parking supply transparent to the driver. As the basic functionality of the system that provides services to advertise, look for, reserve, access and pay for parking space is relevant in many other commercial applications related to e-ticketing, the developed techniques are expected to be applicable in other scenarios in addition to the domain of parking. 1 Introduction Parking activities constitute an extensive area that greatly affects overall mobility of car drivers as all vehicle trip require a parking space at the destination. The influence of parking activities in urban transport is multi-directional as an integrated component of the overall urban transport supply. Related problems derive from the driver s need of affordable and convenient parking space in areas of scarce supply where drivers' search for parking spaces

2 466 Urban Transport X may account for up to 30% of urban traffic flows and a correspondingly high proportion of CO 2 emissions. On the other hand, excessive parking offers are also a source of problems since parking facilities are costly and affect all sectors of the community: government, developers, users, residents and nearby businesses. Besides the associated environmental costs, excessive offer contradicts often transport development strategies looking for sustainable mobility, since free cost parking promotes car use and discourage the use of other alternative modes. In this context, whilst significant efforts and investments continue to be made in areas such as Intelligent Transportation systems (ITS) and Advanced Traveller Information systems (ATIS) to improve traffic flows, the IT sector has paid little attention to the development of innovative tools that can facilitate the implementation of Transport Demand Management (TDM) strategies over parking spaces. Rather, efforts have been consecrated to the development of electronic payment solutions and m-payment schemes whose added value resides in the replacement of on-street parking meters, and more user friendly payment and inspection operations [1]. The e-parking project [2] has focussed on the development of a secure e- business tool for a user-friendly and efficient parking space service based on mobile access. The idea behind e-parking is illustrated in figure 1, where a platform, referred to here as PSOS (Parking Space Optimisation Service) is the gateway through which drivers can easily find parking offers matching their needs. As seen in figure 1, the PSOS is designed to serve all transport segments where a parking space is needed, in other words the PSOS acts as a Parking Brokerage Service. Figure 1: The e-parking concept. The proposed tool has been integrated into an easily deployable system for parking suppliers. From the end-user perspective multi-channel access to the services is provided. The platform enables the incorporation of existing payment schemes, including m-payment. In order to make all processes accessible from the mobile phone, access control is additionally provided via Bluetooth, allowing the user to interact with existing parking equipment when entering or leaving a car park and to be charged based on registered time stamps.

3 Urban Transport X 467 In brief, at the heart of e-parking is a W@P, WEB and Bluetooth-based tool that enables drivers to obtain early information on available parking space, make a reservation, access the reserved place and pay for the service booked. In reaching this goal, the developed innovative solutions seek to benefit all social segments, to optimise existing parking resources, to improve business opportunities with emerging business models, and to contribute to reducing congestion and pollution. 2 User requirements The two target user groups of a Parking Brokerage Service are primarily drivers on the one side and parking space suppliers regardless of their type on the other side. For the primary categories, the essential aspect that needs to be taken into account when specifying a travel related service are the information needs of the users. In general, drivers, as other type of travellers, expect services that i) provide accurate and real time information, ii) meet their preferences and particular needs iii) are available whilst being on the move. Parking suppliers expect services that i) are adaptable or complementary to their parking management policy, ii) can help them to improve existing services or that can bring them the possibility to offer new ones to their customers iii) can optimise their parking management operations iv) and that are related to their parking location and the purpose of use of their customers. While information and communication technologies constitute the building blocks of e-business platforms, particular attention has to be paid to the technological and information requirements that an integrated system may impose either on the drivers side or on the suppliers side. Thus the ability to deploy the system platform easily and ensuring the transparency of operations for the end user cannot be overlooked. Based upon these considerations the essential requirements that have been extracted to respond to the user needs are summarised below. Real-time information provision which shall be precise and accessible by the users of the system, making use of available communication infrastructure (W@P, Web services and SMS). Flexible payment options shall be provided by the system including current credit or corporate cards schemes, pre or post paid payment as well as enabling other mobile payment options. Ease of use characterised by a destination driven service including Geographical Information Service (GIS) modules, which is fast and easy to operate, and that is customisable permitting the introduction of user preferences and the information about services related to the parking destination (i.e. places of interest, events) Highly interoperable platform which is adaptable to different parking suppliers and proprietary systems and which allows transparent integration of Bluetooth devices.

4 468 Urban Transport X High optimisation of operations shall be provided and in particular fast user recognition in relation to entry and exit times that is comparable to existing access control technology such as manual operation or use of parking cards, chip coins or other established technologies. 3 System design and implementation 3.1 Functional areas The above requirements have led to the identification of the following main functional areas [3] of the system which are graphically summarised in figure 2. The horizontal bar within figure 2 shows which available communication technologies are used to guarantee service delivery. Registration Information Reservation Ticket delivery Access control Entry and Exit WAP/WEB SMS Bluetooth Figure 2: e-parking core functions. Registration concerns parking providers and the basic data needed by the PSOS to advertise their parking offer. Driver registration is required so that the basic data needed later by a parking provider for user validation is available (i.e. the license plate number or an e-ticket). As an option, additional details which normally remain the same for every reservation may be introduced by the driver to make the reservation process faster or for the purpose of user administration and later billing. Information is comprised of those functions that deal with the information needs of the driver and the parking supplier. For the driver, these functions are closely associated with the selection of a car park close to the required destination and its features. For the parking supplier, information needs contemplate not only the user information requested to grant a reservation but also the added value information for the purpose of data mining to improve parking management and exploitation. Reservation handling concerns all internal processes and information exchange, between the User, the PSOS and the Parking Provider, which is needed to make a reservation. Depending on the car park policy, reservations can

5 Urban Transport X 469 be handled by the PSOS (quota based) or require intervention by the proprietary system of the selected car park to confirm every reservation requested. Ticket delivery concerns the actions and means used to provide the driver with suitable information to access the selected car park when arriving at the destination. Depending on the car park policy, its access technology and the type of user an e-ticket maybe needed, particularly when the use of Bluetooth technology for validation is envisaged. Access control functions are executed both during entry and exit processes. Entry, in particular, contemplates user validation to link a valid reservation to a particular user and the destination car park before opening the barrier. Access control functions also include user confirmation when entering/leaving the car park for the purpose of registering parking operations (time stamping). When leaving a car park, functions related to the verification of reservation status (valid, used, in car park) are needed before allowing the user to exit the car park. In open areas, the above functions are not necessary and they can be replaced by inspection to guarantee that parking spaces are appropriately used by customers holding valid reservations 3.2 System use cases The above functionality has been incorporated in the system design which has been carried out following UML methodology during the development process. The following diagram of figure 3 summarizes the relationships between all actors involved and the main use cases contemplated within the system [4]. This is composed of the PSOS and the Bluetooth applications developed for access control at the parking site. The registration use case permits drivers to register personnel data, car data, parking preferences and payment data. Parking providers can introduce car park information such as location, description of facilities, list of places of interest, price list, opening hours and entry and payment methods accepted. Parking providers can also specify the reservation policy management and their communication method with PSOS, which includes the possibility of using web services to dynamically interact with the PSOS system. The query use case permits drivers to look for a car park by means of the car park name or address, place of interest or with the help of a Geographical Information System (GIS), i.e. click on the map. Once the car park has been selected, the reservation management use case permits drivers to submit a reservation for a given period introducing the arrival and leaving dates and times as well as the confirmation of personnel and payment data. The reservation management can be fully handled by the PSOS according to the available spaces as offered by parking providers (quota based). Alternatively, the parking providers can approve every reservation request. In any case, the PSOS sends to the parking provider the information needed for user validation when entering or leaving the car park. The driver is also able to cancel the reservation within the terms and conditions given.

6 470 Urban Transport X Driver, Parking Provider and Administrator against PSOS registration login/out new user Query services look for parking Reservation Manage ment Ticket delivery Driver User profile My PSOS Parking Provider Parking Management Profile Data Monitor Driver Parking provider System administrator Administrative services Driver against Parking Provider Enter Driver Exit Figure 3: Overall e-parking use case diagram.

7 Urban Transport X 471 Additionally, the reservation management use case permits parking providers to consult their reservation list and calendar, to visualize reservation statistics and to dedicate specific parking spaces to reservation by blocking or unblocking them according to their car park layout. The ticket delivery use case provides the necessary information to the user for accessing the car park and for handling their own reservations at the PSOS. (i.e. consult or cancel). When Bluetooth is used as the carrier for later validation during access control, an e-ticket is provided via SMS. For the purpose of usability the ticket reminds the user of the basic data for the reservation such as the destination and period reserved. The user profile use case permits drivers to update any information given during registration as well as consulting their reservation list and calendar. The parking management use case permits parking providers to update any information given during registration or related to the reservation management operations. Besides the interaction of drivers and parking providers against the PSOS system, a PSOS system administrator will have access to data monitoring and administration services for the drivers and parking providers. The entry and exit use case permits drivers to interact with the parking system. Here we only describe these interactions via Bluetooth. In both cases, the Bluetooth system in the car park allows: i) the detection of user s presence when they are close to the entry or exit barriers, ii) the interrogation to confirm entry or exit as appropriate and iii) the validation of the e-ticket status (valid, used, in car park) against an exiting reservation to operate the barrier In figure 4, the system deployment is shown from the architectural design point of view. This figure presents how the system deployment, required servers and equipment allows all relationships established previously to take place [5]. The example is illustrated for parking providers that have access control. 3.3 Integration considerations As shown in figure 4, current parking systems have field level equipment that include entry and exit devices to operate the different lanes. In non intelligent car parks, the field level equipment only incorporates functions for the basic operation of entry and exit processes. Intelligent car parks have their devices connected through an internal network to a centralized car park system, with a database, whose level of sophistication may vary. The deployment of the e-parking system implies the accommodation of the PSOS and the necessary Bluetooth application to handle entry and exit processes, in parallel to the current operation modes, of the existing parking systems. In the case of non-intelligent car parks, the car park administrator can simply notify and update the PSOS system about the spaces available for reservation via a web user interface and a standard web browser. All reservation processes are then operated by the PSOS. When a mobile user enters or exits the car park, the

8 472 Urban Transport X Bluetooth system consults the PSOS system for validation of the e-ticket. Both systems are linked by means of a secure internet connection. As a result, the Bluetooth server can issue the appropriate signal to operate the barrier as well as storing the time stamps. DRIVER DRIVER HTML WML SMS Message GSM Modem INTERNET Web Server Application server Database Server PSOS SYSTEM XML, TCP/IP HTML Car Park web server Car Park Controller CAR PARK ADMINISTRA TOR CARK PARK SYSTEM EXIT Barrier ENTER Barrier FIELD LEVEL EQUIPMENT Internet Access Bluetooth Node EXIT W@P Server / Bluetooth Server Bluetooth Node ENTER BLUETOOH SYSTEM DRIVER DRIVER Figure 4: e-parking deployment diagram.

9 Urban Transport X 473 The PSOS provides open standard web services in XML language to dynamically interact with intelligent car park systems. This requires the development of web services hosted in a car park web server. As for the mobile user, the Bluetooth server simply acts as the carrier of the e-ticket during entry and exit operations, likewise a magnetic card reader, to the internal parking system that controls the usual parking functions. 3.4 Interaction of mobile users with access control systems via Bluetooth This section presents preliminary conclusions from the investigation of data transaction via Bluetooth for access control applications using mobile phones. Within the different options investigated by the e-parking project, those that have been implemented as part of the final system prototype are outlined here. The first option contemplates the use of W@P over Bluetooth protocol to upload W@P pages on the mobile device from the local merchant s server. User validation has been solved by requesting manual typing of the e-ticket (i.e. a 4 digit PIN code) to the end user. The PIN code is the same e-ticket which has been previously sent by the PSOS to the end user via SMS. The time required to perform the operation can be optimised if the Bluetooth Identifier of the mobile phone is used instead of the 4 digit PIN code. This is the second option. In this case the W@P page will only propose that the user confirms or rejects the entry or exit operation. This avoids the manual typing of the PIN code and therefore the need to consult or remember it. The Bluetooth Identifier can be extracted by the local merchant s server through the communication process established between the devices. This second option is recommended once the user has been linked to a particular Bluetooth device. In practice, the first option described would also be used to extract the Bluetooth identifier the first time someone uses the system or when the user employs a different mobile phone than the one stored in the PSOS. Later this second option would apply for future reservations. The third option is only enabled by some commercially available mobile phones which allow the sending of SMS via Bluetooth to other devices. In this case the user takes the initiative when facing the barrier to send an SMS to Bluetooth devices in the surrounding area. After the mobile phone detects the other Bluetooth devices around, the user can select towards which one the SMS must be sent and therefore decide on the relevant entry or exit operation. 3.5 Payment The e-parking system permits the accommodation of different payment models over the platform. Corporate users can be charged under the terms of the contractual arrangements established with the parking provider. For other users, payment can take place in advance and be processed via the PSOS in accordance with the reservation period. The procedure can be done offline or on-line. This last case is more secure since on-line verification of credit card details or user validation through mobile phone verification, as currently performed by m-payment platforms, is done before the PSOS issues the e-ticket.

10 474 Urban Transport X In all cases, payment exceptions resulting from parking space use, which differs from that stated by the driver during reservation, can be regulated through the terms and conditions and the help of time stamps registered during the entry and exit operations. 4 Application scenarios In this section, several business scenarios are described which summarize the system contribution in applying innovative parking management strategies over the e-parking platform [6]. The first scenario describes how the e-parking system can serve current parking operators to meet their customers needs at the time of finding additional revenue streams. The e-parking platform adds an additional layer over the existing parking systems which may be of an intelligent nature (i.e. with processing capabilities) or of a non-intelligent nature (i.e. a fairly simple system with a barrier controller and the mechanical barrier). For the intelligent scenario most parking operations are handled by the existing parking systems, including the user validation process during entry and exit operations and the issuing of electronic tickets if they have a reservation system. The use of Bluetooth technology can be substituted by other technologies such as license plate recognition. For non intelligent car parks, the main services described in this paper are handled by the PSOS which acts as a virtual parking operator. In both cases, the operational advantages for the driver include contact-less access, cashless payment, ticket-less parking and is highly suitable for handicapped people. Using Bluetooth as a wireless channel for the interaction of the user with the parking systems can ease access control operations for people with mobility problems. The e-parking system additionally represents a help tool to manage or improve existing services or to offer new ones to drivers (i.e. card holders can be offered the possibility to reserve a parking space with a particular incentive or where the reservation itself becomes an incentive for highly occupied parking facilities during certain periods). A parking supplier can obtain additional revenue streams coming from the reservations made, from a reduction of the operational costs due to less tickets needed, from the replacement of existing technology, such as corporate cards by e-tickets, and from a reduction of the expenses associated to money handling. The second scenario contemplates how e-parking can serve communities of either a public or private nature (such as Park and Ride facilities under administration control or employer s parking facilities). Parking facilities are becoming a scarce resource that can be managed in line with local transport strategies for sustainable mobility. An example is given by communities willing to use their parking resources in combination with other transport modes. Concretely, Park and Ride facilities can be used to grant parking incentives for car drivers when using sustainable transport modes (i.e.: drivers leaving their cars at P+R facilities and taking public transport for their journeys to the city

11 Urban Transport X 475 center or car pooling ). In those facilities the nearest parking spaces to a train station can be reserved for the appropriate users at lower tariffs. Enforcement of such a parking policy does require some sort of parking inspection. This is enabled by the system through the reservation management services offered to parking providers which allow on-line consultation of active reservations. Also, the e-parking platform provides functionalities which could be used for on-street parking. The third scenario refers to the e-ticketing applications where existing business models can be combined with Bluetooth technology to typically handle access control operations or ticket collection in a more user-friendly manner. In fact, in the system presented here, a parking facility can be substituted by other type of merchant. An example to illustrate this case is an ASP (Application Service Provider) selling cinema tickets which are later collected at the merchant s site. Existing systems typically use magnetic card technology for user validation during the user s collection of the ticket. With Bluetooth, the ASP electronic sends the e-ticket ticket to the user via SMS which is later transmitted via Bluetooth from the user s mobile device to a pay on foot machine where a ticket printout can be collected, a process which would later require visual inspection. Alternatively the ticket could even be eliminated and the user granted contact-less access if the link is directly established with the merchant s access control system as would be the case, for instance, of toll gates. Therefore the mobile phone is used here as the communication channel between the end-user and the merchant avoiding the use of corporate cards. Furthermore, the e-parking platform supports different business models whose particular contractual arrangements between the actors involved remain to be established and whose revenue streams can derived from one of the following or combination of several options: i) from a user fee (i.e. subscription model) that can either be a regular fee or based on the number of reservations made ii) from a parking supplier fee (subscription model) that can be either regular or paid per reservation granted and parking time iii) from lack of usage of prepaid tickets that concede a number of parking hours for a certain validity period (i.e. monthly). 5 Conclusions This paper has presented an innovative e-business platform that aims to serve both drivers and the various segments of the parking sector. An overall description of the system has been given while exposing the conclusions obtained during the sequence of activities from user requirements analysis to system design and deployment. The e-business platform core functions include, advertising and management of parking offer for parking suppliers and also functions to look for, reserve, access and pay for drivers. The paper has discussed the combination of the

12 476 Urban Transport X technology used that brings together W@P, WEB and Bluetooth to make the services accessible from the mobile phone. The purpose of the platform is to help drivers planning their journeys by facilitating the finding and booking of parking space at their destination. For parking suppliers an easily deployable system has been designed to offer their available parking space to the drivers while increasing their business opportunities. The developed system has gone a step further than existing parking reservation systems to offer an innovative tool that facilitates the implementation of Transport Demand Management strategies over parking spaces to serve the community in optimizing their parking resources and to contribute to reducing congestion and pollution. References [1] Dahlström Erik, Kahl Ulf, Report on Mobile Parking Payments, a short study presented by the European Parking Association, Committee of Parking Experts, [2] e-parking Consortium, Description of Work, Technical Annex, DG INFSO. [3] e-parking Consortium, User Requirements, D1.1 Technical Report, DG INFSO. [4] e-parking Consortium, Final UML diagrams and documentation, D3.1 Technical Report, DG INFSO. [5] e-parking Consortium, System integration and functional system report, D3.2.a Technical Report, DG INFSO. [6] e-parking Consortium, Exploitation report, D5.2 Technical Report, DG INFSO.