For many drivers, the search for parking space is a stressful exercise filled with frustration and needless waste of time and money. According to the research conducted by the British Parking Association (BPA), the average motorist in the UK spends nearly four days every year looking for parking spaces.
Lack of parking, car parks that are difficult to navigate and a lack of visible pay and display machines were high on the drivers’ list of frustrations.
What is Efficient Parking?
With the number of cars circling around searching for a free space, car parks can cause serious damage to the environment. In addition, parking unavailability causes a negative ripple effect that leads to congestion on the roads and further exacerbates air pollution issues.
However, all is not lost, as there are a number of measures you can take to make your car parking space more efficient and environmentally friendly.
In this article, we discuss how the right technology can significantly curb air pollution levels and improve the overall customer experience.
Reduce Air Pollutants
Congestion and constant car circling lead to increased vehicle emissions and deteriorates air quality. Just consider how much time daily is spent on circling, driving and waiting for a car space, and what impact it has on the environment. This also causes a ripple effect and contributes to urban traffic congestion in surrounding areas.
Therefore, it’s important to ensure that your car parking system is as efficient as possible, enabling drivers to find a parking spot quickly and easily. Our NorParc level counting and parking guidance system offers a variety of ways to successfully manage car park occupancy data and drive the message signs.
It includes a comprehensive range of RGB variable message signs (VMS) that clearly illustrate available spaces and status messages. This way, drivers can clearly see if there are available parking spaces, preventing unneeded circling and driving.
NorParc offers you comprehensive information on real-time occupancy data, early indications of potential problems and a continuous count log to enable the statistical analysis of daily occupancy patterns, space utilisation and more.
Therefore, you can rest assured that everything is being managed and you are in full control of what is happening on your premises to provide truly efficient parking.
Improve Your Energy Efficiency
Car park lighting can seem to be a minor element in the grand scheme of things; however, it can have a sufficient impact on the environment. The light-emitting diode (LED) is considered to be the most energy-efficient lighting technology. LED lights can be up to 80% more energy-efficient and produce very little heat compared to other lighting systems.
Therefore, making sure that your car park lighting system and signs incorporate LEDs can go a long way in improving your car park sustainability. Our high-intensity RGB variable message signs use low profile LED matrices, offering bright, clear messages without sacrificing energy efficiency.
Better for the Environment, Better for Your Health.
More and more companies discover all the innumerable benefits of cycling to work. Not only does it improve employees' well-being and health, but it also helps to support the environment and reduce pollution.
Therefore, adapting your car park to allow easy bike access and offering cyclists a space to store their bikes will kill two birds with one stone - improve your employees' health, and reduce the negative impact on the environment. Learn more on how to boost your car park’s eco-friendliness by offering easy access for cyclists.
Energy Efficiency in Action: Sainsbury’s Case Study
Sainsbury’s supermarket is a great example of how the right technology can give your car park the makeover it needs to become as efficient as possible.
Sainsbury’s wanted to make it as easy as possible for their customers to find a parking space. Their car park has 411 spaces distributed over two levels, which has been successfully served by one of Nortech’s count management systems with available space signs for the last decade.
They decided to make this system even more efficient by upgrading their existing signs to full colour, multilevel, 2-tier variable message signs to help customers find free parking spaces in their two-storey car park.
Therefore, in partnership with Access Automation Limited, Nortech provided a standalone NCT100 Counter Module and two new 2-tier LED Variable Message Signs.
Vehicles are counted in and out of each level and the number of free spaces on each level is calculated by subtracting the number of vehicles currently on each level from its total capacity.
This accounts for both circulating and parked vehicles. In this type of application, the compact NCT100 module operates as an autonomous counting system that can keep up to four independent counts with individual increment and decrement inputs.
As a result, Sainsbury’s in Truro now enjoy a cost-effective, fuss-free, low maintenance standalone system that improves customer experience and reduces negative impact on the environment.
