parking portal tech paper -its-2014.docx - hiit web viewportal for shared parking – improving...

Paper title <for all but first pages>

Portal for shared parking – improving the areal use-rate of company car parks

Jesse Haapoja1*, Kalle Toiskallio*2

1. Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, HIIT, Finland 2. Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, HIIT, Finland. Contact: HIIT, P.O. Box 15600,

00076 Aalto , +358-40 550 5533 [email protected]]

Abstract In order to improve the use-rate of the existing car parking spaces, there is a need to create cost efficient solutions. Building more car parks in dense urban areas is often economically unrealistic solution for the scarcity problem. In this paper, we present a web service Portal for Shared Parking (PSP, www.autopaikkapörssi.fi) that is going to be tailored for the needs of Pitäjänmäki industrial area (Helsinki), having currently very low use-rate of parking spaces. The aim of the service is to offer solution to parking scarcity by promoting renting of unused parking space among different actors in the area. We believe that there is a clear opportunity in the area for more efficient organization of parking; the problem lies in bringing companies together for a solution. The interactive web site as a technical solution is quite simple. It is more interesting to find alignments between private companies and public authority. For the majority of companies, parking is just a daily side activity that should take minimal considerations and costs. For the city authorities, the low use-rate of parking spaces is a long-term nuisance lowering the urban density and thus rising the municipal costs.

Keywords:Car parking, use-rate, Sharetribe, shared parking

Introduction: higher urban density – higher user rates of car parks needed

The availability of public on-street or off-street parking spaces does not meet the needs of drivers, since typically the consumer prize does not cover the expenses. It is inefficient to build new parking areas and costly to build parking structures to highly dense cities. All alternative land use is kept more efficient than parking. Actually, real estate investors are trying to minimize the amount of obligatory new off-street parking spaces in most of their developments while they pay the total investment costs of the urban car parks. For this reason they are heavily trying to negotiate the amount of spaces to be constructed. City planning office (having the legal power to define the municipal parking requirements) considers more the long-term total amount of spaces in a certain area, general city scapes and the probable load of parking demand on public on-street parking. (Shoup, 2011)

In the existing company buildings or business parks the parking ”problem” is more or less the opposite one. There are not enough free spaces. The reason for this is, of course, that typically employee does not pay the total costs of parking. Furthermore, the public taxation policy heavily supports the company parking. For this reason, it is clear that demand is always higher than supply in parking. Following this, especially company buildings in older industrial area in urban environment erect fences and gates to protect their private property, i.e., their free room and free spaces. In areal scale, these kinds of defensive acts of single companies or real estates create very ineffective use-rate of parking spaces. Needless to say, this policy also increases the demand for on-street parking. This creates an illusion that ”there are no parking possibilities in this area”, as company representatives typically said in our

1


research interviews. It is a typical and worldwide phenomenon that car drivers understand the local parking situation by the amount of free on-street parking (Shoup, 2011).

The long-time impression of scarcity of parking spaces indicates that private actors seem to be unable to collaborate with each other, when considering such a mundane activity as parking. Companies in the office buildings, being originally build for industrial use, would need a neutral pattern and forum to use their parking spaces more efficiently. This general good is probably not enticing enough for private companies’ financial endeavors. How to motivate companies to share parking spaces with other companies? Since private companies’ main target is to earn income, the incentives must be money-related. However, when parking is not companies’ core business, it may be hard for them to see the worth of needed extra work for (small) extra income from facility costs that are already budgeted. That is the real challenge of public efforts to increase the use-rate of existing off-street company parking.

Target case: Company car parks in Pitäjänmäki industrial area

Above described setting exists for example in Pitäjänmäki industrial area that is currently transforming from traditional production industry towards knowledge-intensive business area. Companies of traditional industrial production are one after another moving to outskirts of Helsinki and beyond. Even though many of the larger industrial firms have left the area after the recession in 2009, with its gross thousand or so companies the area is the second largest working place area in Helsinki.

There are several train lines going through the northern end (with two stations) of the area, and bus lines going through the western and just outside of the eastern end of the area. However, the walking distances from the middle of the area to the current transit stops could be more than two kilometers. In addition, there are a lot of workplaces for a lot of well-paid high-tech specialists and entrepreneurs, who are not among the main user groups of public transport.

The whole area is located in between of the city area and suburbs. In the city the low cost surface parking would be an impossibility whereas in suburbs there would be plenty of free land to use even for parking.

There are some residential blocks in the area, also, and the city has plans for more of them. In the future, some parts of the Pitäjänmäki industrial area will be truly a mixed area, i.e., having business and residential buildings next to each other. In general, this is a very promising vista for a shared parking scheme on the area.

In pre-interviews (about 30 companies) and in web-survey for 510 companies (N=55) in the area during the summer and autumn 2013, we found that a) generally companies felt that there

2

Figure 1. Pitäjänmäki Industrial area (Helsinki) on a google map.


is a) lack of parking spaces in the area, b) some of them would be willing to hire more spaces and c) there would be a need of full-day spaces and temporary spaces for visitors of bigger events, for example. We named this last finding an ”event parking.” There is an academic literature around new web communities, glorifying of sharing among peers. However, in our research data firms in Pitäjänmäki industrial area did not see their parking spaces as shareable goods for part-time use. The background might be that their parking spaces were used mostly during day-times. In this parlance a parking space seems to be a totality that a firm has or not. From this starting point it was surprising to find out that our very small web-questionnaire data revealed that even among the very neighbouring companies there was a need for spaces - and the willingness to rent some out. Thus, it would seem that problems in the area could be at least partly solved by offering a method of communication to businesses, by this method they can inform each other about their needs and offerings of parking spaces.

The concept of Autopaikkapörssi (Portal for Shared Parking, PSP)

Our interest in the Pitäjänmäki case is not simply a service design oriented, but also academic. When we launch the service, we wish to observe how users communicate using the system, whether they disclose contracts and monetary transactions using the service, or will they rather meet up in person, or use other alternative communication methods such as phones or e-mailing. In short, we want to observe, how the service interlocks to the everyday practices of people and businesses for whom the Pitäjänmäki industrial area plays some role in their daily lives. It is also possible that the PSP service is shunned by the people as somehow unfit for their way of operating in the area.

In order to partly tackle the issues caused by inefficient use of total amount of parking spaces in our target area, we will pilot the web service from mid April 2014 to the end of the year. The service will bring together those who control parking spaces and those who need them. The web page has been build upon a service provided by a small Finnish start-up company

3

Figure 2. Front page of the Portal for Shared Parking


Sharetribe (www.sharetribe.com). It is specialized in providing a platform for different communities to share, sell and rent goods among the members. Sharetribe has been called a “startup for startups”: company’s business idea is to provide a customizable platform for different kinds of marketplaces, so that people can easily take their ideas and turn them into real services. The platform suits well the shared parking service introduced in this paper. It is possible, for example, to glance at specific area on a map and the platform shows all the listings that are located in the target area. This way the user is able to locate where the closest available parking spaces of her or his destination are. One of the factors that lead us to choose Sharetribe for our pilot was the simplicity of its user interface. Preliminary phone-interviews conducted with individuals working in businesses located in Pitäjänmäki industrial area revealed that one of the fundamental requirements for the system would be the simplicity of the user interface.

The service uses open source code so it is possible for us (or, whoever is willing to) to further develope the service. That will be done after we have received feedback and discovered possible emergent problems that may arise during the pilot.

Users of the service are able not only to leave an advertisement about available free space, but also to inform if they are in a need for a parking space.

The novelty of our service lies in our approach to the problem of parking. This kind of fluid way of renting parking space has been done before, for individual private space owners and commuters, for example (services such as parkatmyplace.com and parkingpanda.com). According to our knowledge, there is a lack of parking services that are tailored for certain areas and meant to create opportunities for businesses to generate revenue from underused spaces. On the Sharetribe platform there are websites on which local communities are exchanging small things and services, and there is a web-service in which companies can sell and buy some surplus tools, like smaller machinery and even bolts. The PSP service combines these two themes, locality and money-related exchange of surplus goods.

Hopefully, our method of focusing strictly on businesses at the beginning will increase the trust of the users to each other. Companies are accustomed to making contracts and billing and know the responsibilities that come with making deals. Furthermore, to focus on companies excludes the VAT questions. In this pilot there is no possibilities to solve questions of whether private persons or housing cooperatives should include value added tax or not when they are renting out parking spaces. Problem might be that those spaces belong to the housing cooperative and may thus have different restrictions of use or rent-out in the by-laws of that particular housing cooperative. Of course, we hope that in the future this kind of PSP concept would be extended to shared use of parking also among private persons and housing cooperatives. Already in this pilot it is possible for companies to rent out their spaces for private persons.

4

http://www.sharetribe.com/


Figure 3. An example of the announcements of offered or needed parking spaces.

Aim of this service is to introduce new meaning to parking space: Instead of just being a necessary expense for firms, space that is not used efficiently by the owner, may also turn to an extra income. Especially in areas where parking spaces are a scarce resource. By providing a platform that is easy to use and working together with municipal authorities, our solution does not definitely require a change in physical infrastructure. Instead, we aim to change how parking space is perceived by companies.

The spread of ICT-systems has made it easier to share existing goods between individuals and communities, without the need to produce new items (Botsman & Rogers 2010). Being easy to use, the service welcomes those who do not need full-time parking space, to rent it to those who need it. The service also holds the possibility to ask for available parking spaces, thus possibly lowering the gap for providers to offer spaces: when a customer is already available and willing to pay, there is little reason to not to rent out the unused space. For the customer, the service provides guaranteed parking space in the target destination, and an address for it. In short, we use information technology to bring different stakeholders together and provide them with a new way to approach parking. The aim is to use and combine already existing resources in an innovative way by building bridges between different actors, and the resources, and the needs of these actors.

Materials, competences and meanings of car parking

Although we are concentrating on one infrastructure, being geographically rather clearly bordered area, we are not yet familiar with possible problems in Pitäjänmäki industrial area. There are also problems that reside in the minds and everyday habits of the stakeholders. Currently, there is not much, if at all, sharing of parking spaces among companies. The most of the lots in the area are privately owned. Unlike in many other areas in Helsinki, real estates are located on their own land, so they solve their own parking problems on their own land. Real estate on the neighbour lot has its own problems etc. There is no culture of sharing

5


parking spaces. Thus, much of the problems regarding the lack of parking space in Pitäjänmäki industrial area could be solved simply by providing specific tools to companies to share more their parking assets. These tools should help them to coordinate available spaces to each others. However, it is not guaranteed that the resident companies will welcome the service with open arms. We will study this gridlock by taking another conceptual point of view to car parks and parking in general.

Using the practice-oriented approach of Shove, Pantzar & Watson (2012), parking can be seen as a practice that has established components. These components include aspects that are

1) Material:

Car, car park and its physical facilities like parking meters, gates, barriers, paying stations, information displays, guidance signs and different sensors like electro-magnetic loops and license plate recognition cameras.

2) Competence:

Necessary skills for driving in general and especially an ability to move the car slowly in tight spots and simultaneously observe the dimensions of ones own car, and all possible activities around the immediate proximity of the car.

3) Shared meanings:

Understandings of the symbolic values of honour by having personally nominated parking space, symbolic meaning of a company’s spatial power because of being able to reserve needed land or constructions for parking, the general meaning of supporting car-based infrastructure (=car park is nearer the main entrance compared to the nearest transit stop), perceptions about rental contracts between the owner of the space and the current tenant.

Using the language of the practice-oriented approach described above, we aim to change the elements that make up the practice of parking in Pitäjänmäki industrial area. The service described in this paper is a new element we want to integrate in the process. Simultaneously, it is just as important to try and impose new meaning that is part of the practice. Instead of seeing a parking space as a natural source that is waiting for the use as long as needed, we try to frame the parking space as an asset that can be rented out when it is not needed. Also, the service requires some competence from the user that is not required in parking as such. An example of this competence could be the basic knowledge about online shopping.

The act of renting a space from the PSP, of course, can be seen as a new practice in itself. Even if we hope that the service will become a considerable part as the everyday practice of parking in Pitäjänmäki industrial area, it is only one shared component that is present also in the practices of renting parking space from or renting parking space to other actors in the area. Thus, in our vision, it is a part of system of practices related to parking in Pitäjänmäki industrial area. In different situations, different actors are included in the act of renting out the space. Watson (2012) states that socio-technical systems such as automobility can be recast as systems of practices. Practices such as driving are part of systems of practices which “persist through the routinised performances of actors throughout the system, including public authorities, corporations, maintenance and service sectors, etc.” (p. 8).

In Pitäjänmäki industrial area, some of the spaces are not currently rented to anyone. We argue that the way the elements in the current parking problem of Pitäjänmäki can be solved,

6


at least partly, by “looking outside the box” is more imbedded to local cultural practices and the general ways of thinking than real lack of empty space at given times. Approaching parking in the Pitäjänmäki industrial area with a practice-oriented way offers a theoretical basis for identifying the possible challenges that the introduction of shared parking portal may face.

Probable challenges

Defensive and honorary social meanings of parkingParking spaces seem to be perceived as something personal, in a same way as homes or mobile phones. It seems that there is a general attitude towards parking that causes the idea of someone else driving to parking space that one controls to feel intrusive to some people. Employees having personally nominated parking space within their company building are very reluctant to give it to someone else. Any personal priorities in company parking are easily interpreted as a strong indicator of the person’s social position in that work place. More or less the same symbolical battle applies to relations between neighbour companies. Amount of spaces per company is a very important issue in business parks and other multi-company buildings. This “competition” of parking spaces applies especially if the cost per space is not considerably high i.e., it is not the market prize. The market prize in company parking is a rarity because parking is substituted by the real estate owner to be able to attract tenants. Furthermore, the state of Finland supports parking heavily by accepting companies’ parking costs as a part of their eligible cost of business and thus as a taxdeduction. For these kinds of reasons, introducing a service like PSP cannot be done without considering the current social norms and meanings that people give to the material world.

Our data indicates that it will be rather challenging to recruit companies that control parking space to use our service. Excluding the few commercial parking operators in the area, having their own business models and communication channels, this is surprising. Especially big insurance companies are controlling highly valuable resource that is not currently producing any revenue for them, since they have no tenants in their industrial or office buildings and, “thus”, their parking spaces are not rented out. This goes against the idea of companies being rational actors trying to maximize their revenues. For example, one large insurance company owning also a parking garage located in their residential area has made a formal decision that it will only rent out the free spaces to dwellers and thus rather keep places empty in the garage than rents them to businesses that are located nearby. This decision was based on a desire to “keep things simple”. At first glance, it may seem logical: they wish to keep a tight integration between its apartment rental business and the parking garage.

The rational, maximum revenue-generating model of a company is the idea that we try to anchor our service while marketing it. One clear target for marketing using this kind of framing are the businesses that own office properties that currently have no tenants in the Pitäjänmäki area. Renting out the unused parking space would offer these companies a possibility to gain at least some revenue from their otherwise empty properties. Even these companies may however oppose the idea of renting only their parking spaces. There may very well be an idea that parking space is a part of the office and not something that can be separated from it.

For those in need of spaces the problems may rise from the location of the free spaces. It is hard to know at this point, how far people are ready to park daily from their workplace in

7


Pitäjänmäki industrial area. The area is relatively tightly build, but individuals most likely have different opinions about how close is close enough when it comes to parking. In the PSP pilot we try to follow the differences in attitudes between regular, occasional and visiting parkers.

Materiality of parking: Better access technology needed

Current infrastructure of Pitäjänmäki industrial area has its challenges. Many of the parking areas in the Pitäjänmäki industrial area are closed by a gate, which makes it difficult to rent the space to someone with whom the controller of the parking space has had no face-to-face interactions. Currently, these gates set a very concrete limitation for a more fluid use of parking space. They also underline the severity of the lack of parking spaces in the area: companies controlling spaces have perceived a threat of unauthorized parking so major that they have actually made decisions to implement physical restrictions to protect their parking spaces.

According to our results so far, it is evident that a certain “key” would be needed to be delivered to tenants of company parking spaces, ie., outsiders who have no general access to the company premises. It is obvious that it cannot be the traditional metal key that can be easily copied and is not efficiently distributed to several occasional users.

The key should have an easy but controlled distribution channel like internet, it should have precise but flexibly managed hours of functioning (for example, every night from 6 pm to 7 am during the next 30 days and then only if the contract is renewed), ability to work with low-power and without internet connection. The key could be a downloadable software application located finally in the mobile phone. A company renting out its parking spaces could let the tenant to download the app that via NFC or Bluetooth connection only can recognize a certain gates. The gate asks some very difficult mathematical tasks that this certified app dedicated to this user only is able to answer. No separate servers behind internet connections and having list of authenticated users would not be needed.

However, with the possibilities available for us at the moment, we have to take these access limitations into consideration and decide, whether it would be better to focus on those companies that control spaces that are not protected by gates. In any case, one of our research aims is to study the actual reasons of companies and real estates to hinder the access of paying outsider-parkers into their lots.

Needed competences in sharing the parking spaces

Parking is a very routine act. Parking in a strange environment is more difficult. To drive one’s car into a parking space is not very complicated (supposing there is enough room around the space). However, the entrance and exit gates and doors for drivers and pedestrians may be more difficult. But if the need of parking space is great enough, people are probably ready to challenge these difficulties, especially when they use the parking regularly. Parking facilities are usually surprisingly non-standardised. However, more needed skill or competence will be probably to get used to the idea of prebook one’s parking space in the internet (even if the website of the PSP is easily scalable). Also the use logic of the service may need some practice. There is also a possibility to negotiate about the sum of the parking

8


space rent, which may be an obstacle for some users. Normal problems of online shopping may hinder some users. Trust between unknown actors must be found. Finally, there are several steps before the deal can be closed. Furthermore, the physical control of rented parking space must be solved. The risks in this issue are probably the biggest one the participating companies must consider.

Implementation of the Portal for Shared Parking (PSP)

Marketing and funding. Collaboration with the City planning office of the city of Helsinki has been fruitful. They have been a part of the design process and we have had tight contact with them during the whole project. Sharetribe platform as such is free. However, the payment functionality in the PSP pilot is outsourced to Check-out Finland Ltd. by Sharetribe. This creates some monthly costs. City of Helsinki takes care of the costs of the payment function during the pilot phase. From the user’s point of view, the payment is done via normal internet bank payment. By offering the costs of payment technology, City of Helsinki supports also directly companies in Pitäjänmäki industrial area. Already in the pilot phase the companies in the area can earn extra income by their existing parking assets without paying for the communication channel. In order to gain as much exposure as possible for the service at the launch, the authorities have decided to make the launch of the service as one of main discussion points in a seminar that will be held in early May for representatives of businesses that are located in the Pitäjänmäki area. Furthermore, PSP will be noted in bulletins from the City planning office

Pre-testing. Some city officials and their consultants have been testing the service in order to find possible problems before starting the pilot. We have also contacted four different stakeholders having a lot of parking spaces in the area. We have already learned that the public interest of use-rate of local parking spaces is not naturally aligned with local real-estate managers, not to mention the professional parking operators. Actually, it seems that the PSP may be regarded as overlapping, or even as a competitor of current local parking services. Our assumption that PSP would also support the marketing of the existing parking services may be a bit naïve. Related to this, PSP’s support also for short-term parking will be probably out of scope. Still, the time scale of needed parking spaces dealed via PSP will be one of our study questions.

We believe that having a strong actor such as the city of Helsinki participating in the project and using its own resources to promote the service for those who it is aimed to, help to increases the possibility of gaining a successful adoption rate for the service.

After the pilot, building on the lessons learned during the year, we aim to apply the service to different areas. There is a strong interest from municipal authorities of the city of Helsinki towards the service, since there is a dire need for effective ways of using the current parking capacity of the city more efficiently. In case the PSP is successful, public authorities will probably extend the service to other city parts having mixed area features. Since the platform and program code of PSP is made totally on open source, whoever is free to develop the concept and service further. This applies to also other cities.

We strongly believe that many of the problems related to parking can be eased by offering services such as presented here that are aimed towards increasing efficiency by increasing communication between stakeholders.

9


[Figure, centred]

Figure - Title of figure [Times New Roman 12, bold, centred, below the figure)]

[Text]

Table - Title of table [Times New Roman 12, bold, centred, above the table]

[Table, centred]

[Text]

Acknowledgements [Times New Roman 12 bold, Heading 1]

[Text]

References [Times New Roman 12 bold, Heading 1][Text: as defined above, but Paragraph Spacing: Before 6 pts except for first]

1. Botsman, R. R. Rogers (2010) What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, New York: Harper Collins.

2. Shoup, D. (2011). The High Cost of Free Parking, Chicago, IL: American Planning Association.

3. Shove, E. M. Pantzar, M. Watson (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes.

4. Watson, M. (2012). How theories of practice can inform transition to a decarbonized transport system. Journal of Transport Geography, 24, pp. 488–496

Appendix [Times New Roman 12 bold, bold, aligned left, Heading 1]

[Text]

TABLES, FIGURES, AND ILLUSTRATIONSPlease ensure any illustrations are of usable quality for reproduction. Figures in Word are preferred.

10


Note that you should ensure that illustrations – and especially the texts and hairlines within the figures – would be legible when reduced to 75% of the size of your original. All figures should be labelled using an appropriate method.

11

parking portal tech paper -its-2014.docx - hiit web viewportal for shared parking – improving...

Documents