Managing parking facilities is a complex task that goes beyond assigning spaces. Property managers face a constant challenge: preventing revenue loss due to avoidable leakages. Digital permits, camera-based enforcement, and many other technologies now exist to provide practical tools to help managers track, monitor, and control where losses are happening.
This blog will discuss common areas of leakage and present structured steps to assist property management teams in maintaining accountability across their lots.
Sharing Permits and Misusing Permits
Leakage of revenue is mainly caused by permit sharing. Permit sharing occurs when users share the same permit between multiple vehicles, making it difficult to determine which vehicle has permission to park. In digital permit systems, this may involve license plates registered to several vehicles under one account.
Since digital permit systems do not have enforcement tools, unauthorized users are able to park and pay nothing for parking, thus causing a hole in the revenue generated by the permit system and using up space intended for legitimate customers.
Tailgating and Parking Lot Access Control
Another cause of leakage is tailgating, which occurs when an unauthorized vehicle follows into a lot behind another vehicle. Tailgating bypasses the payment and access systems completely. Most often, tailgating occurs in gated lots that have automatic closing barriers. When access control is based only upon a physical gate, the system is open to vulnerability. Automatic detection tools and monitoring can help minimize occurrences of tailgating by tracking each vehicle that enters a facility.
Controlling Repeat Offenders
A repeat offender, or scofflaw, is an individual who ignores unpaid citations or avoids payment for parking without penalty. If a system exists to track the behaviors of repeat offenders across lots or to record unpaid citations, then those who are repeat offenders cannot continue to park in the lots without contributing to the revenue of the lot. Tracking and flagging the plates of repeat offenders across properties will allow property managers to apply penalties fairly.
Streamlining Enforcement Processes
In order to effectively manage and prevent leakage, enforcement must be more than just manual patrols. Enforcement processes require streamlined workflows that can automatically associate vehicle data with active permits, alert enforcement personnel to violations, and enable enforcement personnel to issue citations quickly. Additionally, enforcement workflows should be integrated into a central system so that enforcement personnel can see real-time data about vehicles entering the lot and can eliminate duplicate effort. Having operational visibility through a centralized system allows for increased coverage without additional staffing.
Generating Reports for Visibility and Action
Reporting tools are necessary to understand the trends associated with permit utilization, violations, and outstanding citations. Managers need to be able to view the rate of permit utilization, the rate of occurrence of violations, and the number of outstanding citations across all of their locations. Reporting tools should provide detailed reports of the date and time of each plate scan, access attempt, and enforcement action. These details allow managers to review the effectiveness of their enforcement and to determine which lots require additional coverage or adjustment of configuration.
Using Technology to Minimize Leakage of Revenue
To minimize the leakage of revenue and increase the efficiency of your enforcement process without adding staff, an alpr camera can be used to automatically identify and provide enforcement personnel with consistent and accurate information to support fair enforcement of parking regulations across multiple lots. Alpr cameras automatically take images of license plates as vehicles enter a parking lot, compare the images to the list of license plates of authorized permit holders, and alert enforcement personnel of any discrepancies.
They serve as a deterrent to violators and provide an accountability mechanism to ensure that all vehicles entering the lot are authorized to do so.
The primary source of leakage in parking operations is usually specific and identifiable issues that can be tracked and controlled. Property managers can implement strategies to address permit misuse, control entry points, and enforce compliance with established policies through structured workflows and reporting to develop a more reliable parking operation.
The inclusion of automated tools will enhance the ability of property managers to maintain real-time visibility into their parking operations, thereby enabling them to react and respond to issues in a timely manner.
