Parking and curbside management might not top your list when imagining ways to transform our communities, but they’re the unsung heroes of urban improvement. These everyday systems are powerful tools for fostering convenience, cutting frustration, and even supercharging local economies. Recently, Tobias Marx, Parking Services Division Manager for the City of Bend, and Sonny Samra, Chief Revenue Officer at Cleverciti, discussed groundbreaking ideas in parking and curbside management. Their forward-thinking insights are paving the way for a future where urban mobility is smarter, greener, and simply better.
Making Parking Simple, Fast, and Stress-Free
The dream of "parking happiness" is no longer just wishful thinking—it's becoming a reality. Tobias and Sonny envision parking systems that are seamless, intuitive, and transformative. Imagine pulling into a busy downtown area, and instead of circling endlessly, your digital parking guidance system leads you directly to an open space. This is more than convenience—it’s about reducing congestion, lowering emissions, and giving people back precious time. With innovative technologies, municipalities are creating a brighter, greener urban future, one parking space at a time.
Why it matters: Less traffic circling means safer streets and reduced emissions; time saved searching for parking can equate to more time to enjoy small businesses and drive economic mobility.
Fair Enforcement: Turning Frustration Into Satisfaction
Let’s face it: nobody likes receiving a parking citation. But what if enforcement could feel fair, even helpful? With real-time detection systems, enforcement officers can exercise discretion, ensuring only necessary citations are issued. Outdated practices like chalking tires or following standard enforcement routes are being replaced with highly efficient real-time, integrated enforcement systems. This isn’t just a win for parking officers and parkers—it’s a game-changer for businesses too. When parking feels fair, stress melts away, and the entire community benefits.
Why it matters: Parking compliance with easy-to-understand rules leads to parker and customer satisfaction.
Parking: A Hidden Economic Engine
Did you know that a single parking space can contribute an astonishing $219,000 annually to the local economy? This jaw-dropping figure highlights why efficient parking isn’t just a convenience—it’s an economic necessity. When customers can easily find parking, they’re more likely to frequent local businesses, boosting foot traffic and revenue. Effective parking management is a rising tide that lifts all boats, driving economic growth while making city centers vibrant and accessible.
Why it matters: The average car visiting a small or mid-sized city's downtown business center arrives with two and a half people, each spending an average of $50. Turnover is key to increasing sales for small businesses.
Addressing Business Owners’ Concerns With Innovation
Business owners often see parking and enforcement as sources of frustration, but technology is changing the conversation. By implementing integrated solutions—like digital dynamic signage to share parking information—cities can reduce confusion, ease enforcement tensions, and encourage collaboration. Parking systems that educate and inform build bridges instead of barriers. These proactive approaches create opportunities for community engagement and ensure parking enforcement becomes a tool for progress rather than a point of contention.
Why it matters: Small businesses, their owners, and employees are the #1 influences affecting public parking options.
Building Trust Through Clear Communication
Trust is the foundation of any successful parking system. Open communication with businesses and communities is essential to clear up misconceptions and build understanding. Why are these parking rules in place? How do they benefit everyone? Digital solutions, from real-time updates to automated reminders, help parkers stay informed and compliant. When people understand the “why,” they’re more likely to embrace the system—and that means happier parkers and thriving businesses.
Why it matters: In a time where social media and other sources can fill in gaps with misinformation, clear communication prevents unnecessary confusion and distrust.
A Hopeful Vision for Parking and Mobility
The future of parking is electric—literally and figuratively. From reducing congestion and emissions to creating equitable enforcement systems and boosting local economies, parking management is poised to become a cornerstone of urban innovation. Technologies like real-time curbside detection, dynamic digital wayfinding, and integrated guided enforcement are transforming how we move through our cities, turning parking into a seamless (and even enjoyable) experience.
The best part? These changes aren’t just dreams—they’re happening now. Tobias and Sonny’s vision of “parking happiness” is a call to action for cities, businesses, and communities to embrace bold, forward-thinking strategies. Together, we can create urban spaces that are fairer, greener, and more efficient than ever.
So, buckle up. The road ahead is exciting, and the journey to revolutionizing parking has only just begun! 🚗✨
For more information about Cleverciti and its range of parking solutions, reach out to info@cleverciti.com
We are currently in an exciting time for the parking industry and parking managers specifically. Finally, technology is entering a space where, for a century, parking management has remained reasonably stagnant. The best part about it is that this technology is available to a range of organizations, not only the most elite shopping districts or enterprise business customers.
Whether through sensors, intelligent signage, or dynamic pricing, every parking manager can bring new technologies to push their entire parking organization forward. Read the 5 tips below to see how you can evolve your parking management.
1. Give yourself more (accurate) data
Data needs to be accurate and up-to-date to be useful. Parking managers can have a single person walk around the parking lot with a clipboard recording open and occupied spaces. Hypothetically, let’s say they cover the whole lot in an hour, reporting back that 207 out of 305 spaces are occupied, and even writing down which ones – does this help? The short answer: no. By the time that person returns to the office, any number of factors could change and the only information you would have is that in a specific time window, certain spots were now occupied.
Manual tracking is an out-of-date method. Today, technologies can automatically track which spaces are available and occupied, and report that back in real-time, keeping the parking management office always up to date throughout the day. These data are archived and can be analyzed to reveal valuable trends about which areas of the lot fill up first, when that happens, and how signage in the parking lot could best enhance a customer’s experience.
2. Give your patrons more data
Once you have this valuable mine of data, its value increases by sharing it. A business’s leadership certainly has a need and use for it, but the most value comes from exposing these data to the driver. Drivers spend several minutes searching for an available parking space near their desired location, before potentially having to give up and find parking further away (or just give up and go back home to order online). While the futile search is a shame, it’s also preventable. With smart parking guidance linked to real-time parking data, a driver knows upon entering the lot whether a spot is open nearby or not, and exactly where to find it. Whether they get their ideal space or have to drive a little further away, they have the benefit of not spending time, energy, or fuel looking in vain.
When a patron receives helpful, welcoming guidance upon their arrival, they begin their overall customer experience on a very positive note. This first impression helps the customer approach the rest of their experience with a positive, can-do approach, leading to higher revenues and higher return-visitor rates.
3. Improve your pricing
One of the best ways to improve your parking management is through further optimizing your pricing models, which is only possible once you have the right data. When you thoroughly understand your parking availability and trends throughout the day, week, or month, then you can discover new opportunities for pricing optimization. For instance, dynamic pricing models can vary the price of a parking space depending on demand – adjusted by an algorithm based on up-to-the-minute needs or pre-set prices for specific times. Or, spaces that are in higher demand could have higher pricing. The pricing for a parking area can be adjusted to maximize revenue and ensure that fill rates and revenues are maximized.
New technologies like the ClevercitiCard can even automate the arrival and payment process. A regular visitor can arrive with a ClevercitiCard in their vehicle, be guided to the nearest available space, and automatically charged just for the parking time they used. This service reduces another challenge in the parking industry: the confusion of how or where to pay. If an organization is bringing smart parking solutions to help shoppers quickly find a nearby space, it doesn’t make sense to have them locate a kiosk or double-check signs for hours of operation. Giving data directly to drivers eases their parking difficulties and shows a level of investment in their overall experience.
4. Manage from the cloud
Gone is the day when parking technologies were on isolated systems with no access from the outside world, forcing managers to be on-site to see the data they need, or making integrations with third-party systems complex and expensive. With modern, cloud-first technologies, data are now always accessible: from home or even the beach. When you want to add an innovative third party, you can now do so with a simple API integration – no astronomical costs or extra hardware required.
5. Do better for the community and the environment
Evolution is about the series of steps it takes to improve from a current iteration toward the ideal. Everyone should be more conscious about the impact our daily lives and processes have on climate change or the environment in general. Each individual person would probably like to drive less for the sake of convenience. Cutting out needless driving in the search for parking also diminishes the emissions that negatively impact the environment and contribute to climate change.
There are also two different ways to look at parking search and its impact on the environment: the grander sense of how emissions negatively affect the natural world but also how the unnecessary search for parking impacts people in the direct vicinity. Increased traffic means more noise and lower air quality for the people living and walking near parking areas. By taking steps to revolutionize the parking process, it lessens this impact. People living in these communities may have a more favorable view towards large businesses or districts that implement smart parking for the increase in living quality, and shoppers might find it more enjoyable to stroll in the area, potentially increasing shopping revenue.
With one simple step, you can help the businesses near your parking facility, improve the lives of shoppers and locals, and start making a positive change for the environment. All of these benefits come when you bring your parking organization into the 21st century.