Automated Parking System

Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SCOPE

1.1 Rationale of the study

Parking plays an important role in mobility, access and the economic development of cities, at the same time it is a profitable business for both the private and public sectors. The car parking market is a sector of the economy that has increased in importance as the market for cars has grown. Traditional ways in managing a parking lot can often be inefficient. The ParkMall old parking system ways can cause problems like struggling with long queues while the attendant is busy with recalculating manual fairs, losing money with dishonest employees that is not recording all the transactions and losing unhappy costumer that can’t find parking space to what it seems to be a full parking lot. If a system exist that can help improve this old ways in handling parking systems, then it would be a big help to people who always access parking areas and for better profitable business for the management.

Pay by plate is a subset of ticket machines used for regulating parking in urban areas or in parking lots. They enable customers to purchase parking time by using their license plate number. The machines print a receipt that generally displays the machine number, start time, expiration time, amount paid, and license plate. Pay by plate is a much more efficient parking management system with license plate recognition, it is efficient in a way that there is no manual checking of each parked vehicle’s plate to avoid queue and save time. According to GARG Lalit a Supervisor at University of Malta an availability of parking within a short period of time is a critical problem. Drivers are wasting a lot of time circling around on campus multiple times to try to find a vacant spot to park especially during the peak hours. In turn, this problem is causing another one – that of wasting a lot of fuel and thus polluting the surroundings.