A Contemporary Solution: On-time Smart Street Parking.
David A. A. Balaban CCNY-ENGL217
Thierno Barry PROF. Davidow
Hui Wu
Ahmdullah Samady
According to Hedges & Company, approximately 276 million vehicles were registered in the United States in 2018. In a congested area like New York City, it is a real struggle and time consuming for drivers to find an available parking spot. Not only is this random search of parking time consuming for drivers, it also increases traffic around the city. It would be very efficient and helpful for drivers to have real-time parking information to assist them in finding available parking space quickly. Real-time parking information can be obtained by implementing a smart on-street parking system that uses a wide network of sensors. An algorithm would synthesize information gathered by sensors, analyze the data obtained, and then provide to drivers an accurate real-time parking spot available. This proposed on-street smart parking system can help mitigate the struggle of finding a parking spot in urban areas, and it will considerably reduce traffic.
The idea of an on-street parking system comes from several problems involving the usage of cars. Some examples of the problems are traffic issues, health concerns, pollution issues, and wastage of time.
Traffic in urban cities are a major concern for the general population. Human “emotional states affect driving behaviors” (Lee, Y., & Winston, F. K., 2016) such as road rage, stress, and frustration. These emotions are usually associated with unsafe and risky driving behaviors. The negative emotions can affect a person’s health. According to a study by D.P, exposure to traffic can dramatically increase a person’s risk of having a heart attack soon afterward. Researchers found that the risk of a heart attack are tripled in the hour after being stuck in traffic.
Being stuck in traffic contributes to wasting time. The time being wasted could be used on productive things such as relaxation, work related materials, and family interactions. Finding a place to park for vehicles is also a challenge and time consuming in urban cities. This force people to use their car longer, therefore causing more pollutants to be expelled into the air. This contributes to air pollution. According to a research by INRIX, the average amount of time per year that is being used for parking sessions is 96 hours for New Yorkers and 13 hours for United States.
INRIX Parking Rank (http://inrix.com/press-releases/parking-pain-us/)
INRIX Parking Ranking – Extra Time for Parking Sessions and Parking Fines(http://inrix.com/press-releases/parking-pain-us/)
According to INRIX, the drivers in the Big Apple spend 107 hours per year searching for a parking spot at a cost $2,243 per driver in wasted time, fuel and emissions of pollutants. Particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide are the major pollutants from motor vehicles (“Cars, Trucks, Buses”, 2018).
Moreover, there have been many attempts to solve or at least improve on the issue, in the US and in the rest of the world. For example, in New York city there are many metered parking spots, where drivers have to pay by the hour to park and, depending on the time of the day, aren’t allowed to park at certain specific locations. Not every solution is the most efficient and some do help to improve the issue, but none have been as successful as smart street parking is predicted to be. There are two main solutions being implemented around the world that do help improve the issue, but are not enough to solve it..
Firstly, many cities in the world have introduced tolls to access certain areas of the city that have a daily high volume of traffic. A great example is London, where the congestion charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a vehicle within the charging zone between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday. There are many ways to pay, but the easiest is to set up an auto pay. Even though this solution will decrease the number of cars on the street, making it so only the cars that absolutely need to be in that area will be there, it still isn’t the most efficient solution as it forces people to use public transportation instead of driving and in some cities that could be an issue as well.
Similarly, in an attempt to decrease the number of cars on the streets, the government of Sao Paulo, Brazil introduced a car rotation system on the city. The car rotation system is really simple. During specific weekdays cars with a specific license plate are not allowed to be running on the streets from 8am to 6pm. The rotation day is determined based on the last digit of the car’s license plate. License plates ending with 1 or 2 cannot be out on Mondays, license plates ending with 3 or 4 cannot be out on Tuesdays, license plates ending with 5 or 6 cannot be out on Wednesdays and so on. The idea is to decrease the volume of traffic on the streets, which should make traffic jams improve as well as more parking spots to be available. However, this solution, much like the one above, doesn’t really solves the problem , but rather alleviates the issue for the time being. Therefore, we believe smart street parking can be a viable and efficient solution to this issue.
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is becoming a trending research topic in recent years. Using Intelligent Transportation systems to improve traffic and travel experience help tackle issues congested cities and drivers face (Muhammad et. al. 2018). Here, we presented an overview on how Intelligent Transportation Systems is resolving the problem of finding an available parking spot. An efficient On-Street Smart Parking System would help save fuel, time, reduce traffic, and stress.
The On-Street Parking System consists of a wide network of sensors and a database station. To collect real-time data on whether a spot is available or not, sensors can be installed in two different ways. The first method would be to put sensor nodes alongside the roadside. This method requires each node to be mounted on the center floor of a parking space. These sensor nodes are able to detect if a car is parked or not on the specific parking spots they covered. The sensors would then indicate the status of each spot by transmitting data to the router connected to it. The main based station would obtain all the information gathered by each router, analyze it, and then transmit a signal to a LED mounted at the entrance of each street. The LED would show green if there is an available parking space, and red if no parking spot is available.
Diagram of street parking system (A Street Parking System Using Wireless Sensor Network, p2)
Instead of driving randomly on each street to find parking, drivers will check the LED display placed at the entrance of each street. This would tremendously help save time, fuel, and reduce the stress of drivers.
The second method is to mount sensors on poles instead of fixing them on the center of each parking spot. This method requires a fewer number of sensors. Gathering and transmitting information follows the same protocol as the first method described above.
The two methods that we proposed requires investment. It involves the investment of money, work force, materials and time to complete. The land size of New York City is 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km2). According to Michael Pollack, there are about twenty city blocks in one square mile. Every city block is not the same size but we can roughly determine how many blocks there are in the entire city. Therefore, we will say there are approximately 6000 blocks in New York City. If we used the first method and there is an average of 10 cars per street, then there will be about 44 cars per block. This means there will be about 44 car sensor nodes per block and 8 LEDs (2 per pole) and 4 routers per block. To set up all the sensor nodes and LED, government contractors will be required. An average salary of a government contractor is about $55,000 dollars per year. We propose about 300 contractors that would be hired to implement all the sensor nodes and LED within the next three to four years.
We also propose a parking app that allows drivers to see the availability of a parking spot from their smartphone mobile. The sensing systems analysis would transmit the information to the database in real time. From there, information about open parking space can be sent to drivers’ smartphones through an app (Carroll, 2016.) The app can keep drivers notified of the status of a spot in real time. The app can benefit both drivers and cities. It would create the best traveling experience for drivers, and help save money on gas. On the other hand, cities would benefit from reducing traffic congestion and harmful fuel emissions.
The second proposal will include hiring a team of software engineers to create the smartphone mobile application and the maintenance of the system. A team of software engineers for this proposal will consist of 10 people. An average salary of software engineers is about $84,000 annually(PayScale, 2018).
The system discussed in this report has the potential to solve or mitigate a myriad of problems present in cities with large population densities. The same study made by INRIX also estimates that searching for parking costs Americans $73 Billion a year, while costing a motorist living in New York City on average $2,243 per year in lost time and wasted fuel.
By installing smart street systems into every major metropolitan area, countless hours would be saved. Searching for parking would become much more streamlined and efficient compared to the randomness that is the present-day method. Less time looking for parking leads to less cars on the road and thus less traffic, which saves not only motorists time and money, but also the city. Less traffic also means less cars idling wasting fuel leading to much less air pollution in urban environments. Less air pollution combined with motorists spending less time searching for parking and having more free time, results in city inhabitants having happier, healthier lives. Once the infrastructure is in place, the potential for smart street additions is immense. If the presented system were implemented into a city, it wouldn’t be difficult to have add-ons that further improved the lives of a cities inhabitants. Some examples of further improvements that could be implemented are
· Pay-per-use parking instead of the present-day method which is pay-per-estimate use and fines for any time over.
· App integration, further helping motorists find spots and allowing users to pay for parking via mobile device, making the use and maintenance of parking meters obsolete
· Smart illegal parking systems capable of informing parking enforcement officers when a car is parked illegally, leading to faster and more efficient use of the officers and any tow truck drivers time.
These are all examples of potential add-ons to the system once implemented, but the possibilities for improvements are endless. The implementation of smart street systems in highly congested cities will save time and money for the city and its motorists while also making its inhabitants happier and healthier.
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