Customers waiting for passenger lifts or
tickets at train stations become impatient after about 20 seconds. The same is
true at pay stations in busy car parks. Queues that do not move can cause
serious irritation to customers and it is in everyone’s interest to design and
operate a system which minimises avoidable delays.
Different
Car Park Scenarios
Three different car park scenarios help put
the situation into perspective.
a) In the local shopping centre,
average stays will be short, turnover high and parking charges relatively low.
The scale of the car park, the location of pay stations and general traffic
arrangements will be easy to grasp. The customers will be high frequency and
very familiar with the car park technology.
b) In a regional or national
comparison shopping centre car park the average stays will be longer, fees
will be higher and the customers will be infrequent visitors and relatively
unfamiliar with the system. The scale of the car park is likely to be larger
and the locations of pay stations will be unfamiliar to many customers.
c) Car parks at international
airports have a mix of customers – meeters and greeters, short trip and
long trip passengers. Average stays vary greatly. The scale of the long stay
car parks is likely to be massive with shuttle buses and general traffic
delays. Pay stations may be miles away from parking spaces and different tariff
structures will apply.
These car parks exhibit very different
patterns of usage and consequently require very different numbers of pay
stations.
|
Shopping
Centre
|
International
Airport
|
|
D
|
Local
Convenience
|
Regional
Comparison
|
Short-Stay
|
Long-Stay
|
|
Average Stay
|
<
1 hour
|
2
- 3 hours
|
1
- 2 hours
|
5
- 7 days
|
| Parking Events per 1,000 Spaces per
day
|
8,000 - 12,000
|
3,000
- 4,000
|
3,000
- 5,000
|
200
|
| Peak Hour Parking Events per 1,000
Spaces
|
1,500
- 2,000
|
500
- 600
|
500
- 700
|
20
- 40
|
Pay Stations Required for Peak Hour
Traffic (80/hr)
|
19
- 25
|
7
- 8
|
7
- 8
|
<
1
|
Optimum
Number of Pay Stations
Engineers and architects sometimes use
rules of thumb for the number of pay stations required e.g. 1 per 200 parking
spaces. This approach is generally inappropriate.
Pay
station numbers must reflect traffic volumes and not parking capacity. A 1,000 space car park serving a high volume convenience shopping
centre may have three times as many parking events as a similar car park in a
long stay city centre shopping centre. The peak hour in one may see 500 cars
departing while in the other the numbers could be 1,500 per hour. 6 pay stations might be perfect for the city
centre facility while the suburban car park might find 20 pay stations too few.
The number of pay stations in a car park is
optimised when all peak hour departing customer payments are processed with no
or only minor delays. Three factors come into play
1) the average transaction time per paying customer
2) the reliability and resilience of the system
3) the acceptable delay to customers
1)
Transaction Times
The cycle time for a payment transaction is
the time between one customer
- arriving at the pay station
- inserting the ticket into ticket reader
- checking the fee displayed
- locating the coins, notes or credit card and inserting these
into slots
- retrieving the ticket, change, receipt
- retrieving bags, trolley, buggy and departs
and the next customer in the queue starting
the process again.
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A customer who is familiar with the system,
has no baggage, children, trolleys etc, has calculated the fee, has the exact
change and ticket ready can be fast and efficient. On the other hand, the
person, who is unfamiliar with the system, has baggage, trolley etc, is
unprepared, inserts the ticket into the note reader and requires assistance
will be very slow and inefficient.
The web site of one leading equipment
manufacturer states that their pay stations can process 350 transactions per
hour! This is only possible in a laboratory when pre-coded tickets are
processed and no actual payments are made.
In a car park where most customers receive
complimentary parking or pay by credit card transaction times can be about 20
seconds and 180 to 200 customers can be processed at one pay station in a busy
hour. Peak hour flows of 1,000 departures can be processed by 6 or 8 well
located stations.
In the world of cash transactions,
processing rates are only 60 or 80 per hour with average processing times of 45
to 60 seconds. This means a requirement for 12 to 16 well located stations to
process 1,000 transactions during a peak hour.
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Watch customers and the reasons are
immediately obvious: They are
- concerned for the safety of their belongings and children slows
the approach to and departure
- unprepared – find the ticket, locate the purse or wallet,
calculate the fee, extract the coins/notes
- unfamiliar with the particular system – locating ticket, coin
and note slots
- confused by poor design and signage– tickets or notes inserted
upside down or back to front
- delayed finding coins, recovering rejected coins or notes
- asking for assistance
- failing to recover tickets or receipts
These all combine to extend the transaction
time and reduce the ‘real’ processing capacity of the stations.
2)
Reliability and Resilience
To the above list of delays must be added
coin, note and ticket jams, down time at stations for non-routine maintenance,
cash collection, change replenishment and repairs.
|
Questions: How often do customers
· arrive at a pay station to be met by ‘Out of Service’?
· insert a note into the reader only to have it returned regardless
of direction of presentation?
· insert coins only to have them fall through the mechanism three or
four times before being accepted?
· insert the ticket only to have it returned because the system
lacks 4-way reading?
Answer: Too often!
|
A busy car park must invest in staff
training, front line and preventative maintenance programmes if system
reliability is to be of a high standard.
It is very desirable that all busy
locations have at least two pay stations. This redundancy allows time for running
repairs e.g. unjamming of coins or tickets without undue customer delays.
3)
Customer Queues and Delays
In an ideal world there should never be
more than one party ahead of you at a pay station. More than three parties at
any station at any one time is probably unacceptable except at absolute peak
times.
Customers arrive in bunches at a pay
station - almost at random.
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This analysis shows an average of 2.2
parties at the pay station at any time across the peak hour and delays as
follows:
|
Delay in Minutes
|
Busy Hour Customers
|
|
0
|
35%
|
|
1
|
27%
|
|
2
|
22%
|
|
3
|
10%
|
|
4+
|
6%
|
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The average time spent at the pay station
is 2.23 minutes.
An analysis of expected footfalls must be
undertaken to help identify the access points with the heaviest car-borne
footfall. The peak hour flows for the different locations, combined with the
realistic transaction rate for the pay stations, gives the number of pay
stations required at each location.
|
Access/Egress
Point A B
|
Busy Hour Car Borne Footfall 900 600
Average Car Borne Party Size 1.5 1.5
Busy Hour Departures/Payments 600 400
Processing Capacity per Pay Station 80 80
Number of Pay Stations Required 7.5 5.0
No. of Pay Stations to be Installed
8.0 5.0
|
To meet the requirements of mobility
impaired customers, it is essential to provide at least one wheelchair
accessible pay station at each major access point.
Conclusions
The patterns of demand in any car park are
a reflection of the patterns of activity at the traffic magnet(s) which the car
park services.
The number of pay stations required must be
based on the expected departing traffic during a peak hour and not some rule of
thumb.
The number of pay stations required to meet
peak hour demands is a function of
- peak hour traffic departing the magnet
- the tariff structure - £1.00 per hour requires fewer coins than
£1.15 per hour
- the mix of payments methods – comps, coins, notes, cards
- the ‘real’ processing capacity of the pay stations
- the familiarity of the customer base with the system
Regular customers learn to use the system
efficiently. During the launch of a new system all customers will be unfamiliar
with the system and will be slow and may require assistance.
When deciding on the numbers of pay
stations, remember that machines break down, and that tickets, coins and notes
jam in the machines, so over-provide rather than under-provide. The pay station
is one of the last contact points between you and your customers – try to make
it a positive experience.
Liam Keilthy is Managing Director of
Parking Consultants Ltd., a Dublin based professional practice providing car park
and related advice to local councils, developers and commercial operators countywide. www.parkingconsultantsltd.com
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