SmartP: Revisiting the Parking Experience

The number of cars in cities and the lack of space for parking them require solutions, some of which are already being applied. This work focuses on the use of parking fares to make sure that cars are not parked for any time longer than their motorists would require. More specifically the focus is on the alternatives being deployed to allow motorists to pay these fares and to allow parking inspectors to make sure that cars have a valid ticket. The presented solution only compares to a subset of all existing solutions, and more specifically mobile phone based ones. Only on-street parking is considered, because this is the alternative with the greatest potential for the future. Moreover part of the inconveniences encountered by motorists who park their cars on-street are not present in off-street parking. The proposed solution, smartP, reduces adoption barriers compared to existing application-based alternatives. Further more, it solves some of the most criticized problems of the alternatives: first of all it reduces the amount of user input required to accomplish any task, and secondly it creates an infrastructure which lets motorists have one application (and account) for all participating cities.