Japanese Parking Lots Accept Contactless Payment
July 12, 2008
Japanese parking lot operators are beginning to accept contactless payments as card issuers continue to try to make inroads in Japan’s cash-based consumer economy. More and more pay-by-hour lots are accepting payment via contactless cards or mobile phones equipped with contactless chips, according to the Nikkei news service. Nippon Parking Development Co., which runs about 100 lots in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, will accept iD, the contactless credit brand launched by mobile network operator NTT DoCoMo and credit card company Sumitomo Mitsui, the Nikkei report says. Another parking-lot operator, Park 24 Co., accepts three contactless electronic purses: Edy, Suica e-money and PiTaPa. The latter two e-purses are mainly used to cover transit fares in and around Tokyo and Osaka, respectively. Overall, Japanese consumers make more than 90% of their purchases in cash, according to DoCoMo estimates. To capture a piece of this market, card issuers are supporting a total of five major brands of contactless credit and electronic-cash programs, with more on the way. Consumers can make contactless payments at thousands of convenience stores and other merchant locations, but few of the card-reading terminals are interoperable, which threatens to confuse consumers. Masao Nakamura, president of DoCoMo, told the Nikkei Marketing Journal this week that his company is now working on a contactless point-of-sale terminal that can accept all three brands of contactless credit in Japan.
Source: http://www.n-p-d.co.jp/en/index.html
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Networked Parking System Alerts Drivers to Free Spots
July 12, 2008
New technologies promise to revolutionize the hunt for a parking spot in big cities like San Francisco. Donald Shoup is along for the ride.
“This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.
Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.
Solving the parking mess takes on special significance in San Francisco because two years ago a 19-year-old, Boris Albinder, was stabbed to death during a fight over a parking space.
“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,” said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose work on the pricing of parking spaces and whether more spaces are good for cities has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.”
Local councillors have long called for a solution to the parking problems at the station and they attended a meeting this week with Translink representatives who said they had plans for a new ‘park and ride’ initiative which could see the car park in use by the end of next year.
Mr Crawford commented, “Translink and Northern Ireland Railways announced details of their plans to build a three storey car park at The Sidings end of Antrim Street at a meeting earlier this week.
“Obviously there have been parking problems at the train station and with the number of commuters increasing, this has been much-needed.
“They are hoping to develop a ‘park and ride’ facility as there is no longer room for people to park their cars in Lisburn. Each day there are 70 or 80 cars parked along the North Circular Road. In October the over 60s will be eligible to travel for free which will increase the number of commuters further.
“There are still politics to sort out but the car park will have a capacity of approximately 272. Translink have said that Lisburn is now the number one priority for the park and ride facility out of all the stations in Northern Ireland and they hope to have this ready for the end of next year, provided there are no undue delays with the Planning Service.”
A Translink spokesperson said: “Translink are examining Park and Ride options in many areas including Lisburn. No final decisions have been made.”
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Car Park Maths Project
July 6, 2008
Do you have problems setting an interesting and new maths project, that all the students in your class, whatever their level of ability is, can take part in? This project to plan a new car park layout, gained the interest of the students and provided many lines of investigation that stretched the more able, while allowing the others to utilise their basic maths. I used it with GCSE students but it can easily be adapted to other levels.
This idea was thought up when the college car park was being extended and changed and it certainly engaged the students and provided for some novel and interesting ideas from the students.
Drawing a Scale Plan
The students will need to measure the car park, paths and buildings. They will need to calculate the angles to ensure the lines meet up correctly. Encourage a legend to be added to the plan to show trees, bushes, paths, doors etc
Set a scale that the plan should be drawn to, this will enable you to easily check the results at the start against a master plan. This will involve the use of ratios to calculate the length of the lines of the paper.
Alternatively, this could be a combined exercise for the whole class, producing a single scale plan that can be copied and provided as the starting point of the project.
Data Gathering
The students will need to obtain data to decide how big to make their car park spaces. There are various types of data gathering and surveys that can be undertaken and used in the project. Some examples are given below, but don’t let this list limit your imagination.
- The size of spaces in a number of car parks in the local area.
- The size of various types of cars
- The popularity of the different size cars
- The room need to open car doors
Presenting Data
There are various standard ways to present the data, for the car park spaces and the car park sizes. Some examples are specified below for the car data, but there are many more possibilities. The students can take this as far as their capabilities allow.
- Group the car data in to a frequency table. Calculate the percentages to show the most popular sizing groups.
- Visually present the grouped data in bar charts
- Use a scatter plot to show the relationship between length and width. There should be a strong correlation.
- The popularity of cars sizes could be presented as a ratio.
Calculating Statistics
Everyone should be able to attempt to calculate the median, mode and mean averages for the length and width of the spaces and the cars. A good extension is to calculate further measures such as the standard deviation and percentiles.
Making Decisions from Data
The point of the data gathering is to determine what size the car park space needs to be. They are trying to fit in the maximum number of spaces, while still allowing the car park to be used effectively. This is the interesting part to see what the students will think of.
- do the students remember that you need to open and close the doors
- have they allowed room to drive in and out of spaces
- what inventive ideas have they come up with. One report handed in had three recommended car space sizes, one for large cars, one for small cars and one for disabled drivers who need to open their doors wide.
Extension Study
There are many further directions that this study can be taken to. A few ideas are below, but encourage your students use their imagination
- Usage Surveys: Surveying the car use in the area to determine the usage to ensure the car park has enough spaces.
- Financial: Would it be possible to charge for the use of the car park, how much you would expect to make, how much it would cost to operate, would people pay.
- Trigonometry: One student measured the turning circle of a few cars and use trigonometry to calculate the optimum turning space needed to get in and out of a car park space
Marking
You are really marking this project on the accuracy, applicability and the difficulty employed in the various techniques, but do allow a portion for the finished result.
- Are there a reasonable number of spaces?
- Is it possible to get in and out of you space and car without scraping the car next to it.
This study was very popular with the students and the reports varied from fairly basic to some advanced maths according to the ability of the student. While they had some guidance and ideas, they were encouraged to think up more for themselves and they certainly did this.
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The Problem With Present Parking Control
June 29, 2008
EFFECTIVE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IS COSTLY!
There can be little doubt that parking in most towns, cities, institutions, terminals and stadiums is a major isssue. For local authorities who are having to accomodate an ever increasing number of vehicles and reduced resources, the task of effective traffic management is daunting indeed. A solution that not only satisfies a variety of parking needs but remains cost effective and generates additional income, becomes imperative.
DEPENDANCE UPON ON/OFF STREET GENERATED FUNDS!
Many towns, cities and businesses rely heavily on revenue generated by way of on/off street parking and the mandate is to effectively administrate a parking system that optimizes use of available space while maximizing revenue generation through effective enforcement. The goal of these facilites is to minimize parking congestion, illegal parking, encourage rapid turnover, and generate additonal income.
FREE PARKING ISN’T FREE!
Free parking represents lost revenue to the parking provider, which contributes to higher local taxes or operating costs that can be mitigated in the case of private parking providers. Free parking encourages “Long Term Parking”, inconveniencing shoppers and citizens resulting in lost business for retailers operating in densely populated areas.
CURRENT PARKING METER SYSTEMS SUFFER FROM BREAKAGE AND THEFTS!
Many of the parking control systems currently in use cost substantial sums of money to implement and maintain. Just providing for mechanical or electronically metered infrastructure is too costly for many smaller towns and entities like universities; forcing them to forego the new profit centers paid parking would otherwise provide them. Even large municipalities are finding that the cost/benefit of meters is becoming questionable especially when the other attendant problems of meter use are considered. The mechanical and electronic equipment (meters) are particularly susceptible to a substantial amount of “leakage” through uncollected parking fees, whether to mechanical failure, theft, damage, tampering with on-street equipment, undetected overstay and other breaches of parking controls.
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