Fascinating Parking Survey

in Motorways by Jon C — April 23, 2010 at 8:57 pm | 0 comments

Hamilton’s council next week embarks on a fascinating study on where motorists park in the inner-city.

The council says it has enough parking spaces but motorists are not using them well.

“Well-managed parking enables revitalisation of city centres,”says a council spokesman. “Parking availability has been highlighted as one of the most significant challenges facing vitality in the city heart.”

Over the next two months, the survey will collect quantitative information on where vehicles park and how long they park there for.

The information will be collected via:

• Temporary sensors in parking bays that can tell when a car arrives and leaves a parking space, showing which spaces are used the most.
• Vehicles designed to take automatic photographic records of cars throughout a set circuit at set times. This can also tell where people are parking most and for how long. Only numbers of vehicles and vehicle stay times are stored and no personal information is gathered.

It’s hoped that the data will help the council:

• identify areas of highest demand
• understand how long vehicles are parked
• show at what times of the day visitor numbers to the city centre are at their highest demand
• understand how long vehicles are parked
• show at what times of the day visitor numbers to the city centre are at their highest  demand.

The council says it wants motorists to park as they normally would during the survey. Parking bay sensors and survey cars are for data collection only and no extra tickets will be issued.

Tags: Hamilton Hamilton City Council parking