County and City Parking Management Systems - Parking Area Equipment Functionality
Subsystem Description
'Parking Area Equipment' provides electronic monitoring and management of parking facilities. It supports an I2V link to the Vehicle that allows electronic collection of parking fees and monitors and controls parking meters that support conventional parking fee collection. It also includes the instrumentation, signs, and other infrastructure that monitors parking lot usage and provides local information about parking availability and other general parking information. The two primary approaches to monitoring parking area usage are sensing vehicles within parking spots or counting vehicles as they come in and as they leave the area. This portion of the functionality must be located in the parking area where it can monitor, classify, and share information with customers and their vehicles. See also the separate 'Parking Management Center' physical object that may be located in a back office, remote from the parking area, which interfaces with the financial infrastructure and broadly disseminates parking information to other operational centers in the region.
Functional Object: Loading Zone Management
'Loading Zone Management' manages loading zones. It monitors loading zone space occupancy and makes this information available to arriving vehicles and other applications. It monitors the time each vehicle spends in the loading zone and provides this information to drivers in the zone and other applications. Day and time specific management is supported for loading zones that revert to normal vehicle parking spaces in off hours and other day/time specific management strategies. In advanced implementations, reservations are accepted so that a loading zone spot can be reserved with an optional accompanying payment. Vehicles associated with the reservation are identified on arrival and directed to the reserved spot.