Mobile Phone Based Parking Payments

The development in the field of mobile phone based parking payments has been very intense in the last few years. New systems have been developed and tried out, and several systems are in commercial use mainly in European cities. In Finland one mobile phone based parking payment system is in use in Helsinki, Espoo, Hyvinkaa, Hameenlinna and Lappeenranta. In Oulu, two systems are in use. In addition to that, one system is also available in Helsinki-Vantaa airport. In Europe there are many mobile phone based payment system providers who offer highly developed systems. There are also companies, who offer systems which are integrated into normal pay-and-display machines, enabling the driver to use a mobile phone in paying for the parking. A good mobile phone based parking payment system from the drivers' point of view is easy and fast to use, versatile, relatively cheap to use and location-independent. There should be a function for preventing too high parking costs and the system should offer several paying methods. The system should charge the user only for the actual parking time, and it has to know the parking regulations in different areas. In addition to that, there should be a function which warns the user for example with an SMS message when the parking time is about to expire. From the parking operators' point of view the system must be reliable and easy to use. There should be comprehensive functions for compiling statistics and the system should be able to tell the real-time parking information. Parking enforcement should be easy and fast to do, and investment and operational costs should not be too high. It is clear that there is no perfect system from all points of view. For example, a good feature for the driver can be far from good from the parking enforcement officers' point of view. Due to that, compromises have to be made. These compromises are affected by traffic policy. For example, does the parking operator want to offer a new, easy to use payment system for drivers, or to minimise the costs in the parking enforcement process. The representatives of cities interviewed in this study claimed, that the objective to improve service is important and in many cases the most important reason for investing in mobile phone based parking payment systems. Thus, when investing in new payment system(s), the parking operator should keep in mind which features are important to drivers. However, the features important to the parking operator itself should of course not be forgotten. This report is available at http://www.vtt.fi/rte/projects/fits/ or http://www.mintc.fi