Curbside Management Solutions Rein in Chaos Caused by Delivery, Rideshare Vehicles 

With the rise of delivery services, rideshare services, micro-mobility and outdoor dining during the pandemic, there’s been an swell in demand for curbside space. This has boosted cities’ need for curbside management solutions. 

“You’ve got this huge demand for that real estate that didn’t really always exist there, so they try to think about how they can define, permit and manage that, ensure that they’re getting the revenues that they need to as well as trying to figure out how they can maximize public good as they do that as well,” Scot DeLancey, SVP of Product Management and Strategy for T2 Systems, told PYMNTS. 

In December, Verra Mobility completed its acquisition of T2 Systems, saying that one of the services they will provide is curbside management that pairs Verra Mobility’s photo enforcement solutions with T2 Systems’ parking technology. 

Today, T2 Systems provides parking software and hardware solutions while Verra Mobility’s services include managing tolling transactions and violations for commercial fleets and rental car companies, and operating safety cameras that provide photo enforcement for governments. 

“That’s some of the things we’re conceptually thinking about right now, and how we can expand that out within things that we’ve already been doing from a T2 perspective, and now adding on some of the capabilities that Verra has with relationships, technology and things like that,” DeLancey said. 

Solving the Chaos at Curbside 

To help solve the problems of delivery vehicles blocking traffic and micro-mobility scooter littering sidewalks, cities are turning to parking technology providers to define the parking areas, facilitate payments for use of those spaces and enable enforcement. 

Adding camera-based technology, such as license plate recognition technology mounted on parking enforcement vehicles, helps automate the processes of checking compliance, taking pictures of the vehicles and issuing citations. 

“That’s a lot of what is happening and how we’re thinking about defining, solving and putting order to that chaos that’s out there,” DeLancey said. 

T2 Systems also solves the challenge of enforcing rideshare or carpool permits that can be shared by two or more vehicles. Campuses and cities can use the company’s technology to find which vehicles are part of that permit, see if more than one are in the area when they shouldn’t be and then issue citations to those that have broken the rules. 

“It’s really nice because a lot of time those carpool permits are much cheaper and/or get preferred parking areas within the campus, for example, in the university space,” DeLancey said. 

Making Paid Parking Frictionless 

While these parking problems are often thought to be a problem in larger cities, there are also issues that challenge mid-sized and smaller cities. One is that in smaller cities, the same team may be doing both law enforcement and parking enforcement. By deploying technology, they can add some automation to parking enforcement, code enforcement and jaywalking citations. 

Another challenge faced by small- to mid-sized cities is that they are adding paid parking for the first time because sales tax revenues have gone down during the pandemic. Putting permitting or meters in place requires them to also manage payments. 

“They may have card payments in their permitting office or something like that, but nothing on the scale of what they would have to deal with, with parking,” DeLancey said, adding that they need a vendor that can provide a turnkey solution that includes an integrated payment offering and PCI compliance. 

A third challenge for these cities is citation collection. They often look to outsource this because while they’ve added the work that comes with paid parking, they may not have added people. 

“That’s something else that we do,” DeLancey said. “So, you end up with three areas that we can cover with payments that go along with the parking management solution that offset a lot of the work that a city, especially a small or mid-sized city, wouldn’t necessarily be able to absorb otherwise.” 

By offering these services and a variety of payment options, T2 Systems makes parking enforcement and curbside management easier for both these cities and universities and the drivers who visit them. 

“We want to be just as frictionless and behind the scenes as possible, because parking is not the destination,” DeLancey said. “When someone’s going to the university, going to dinner, or going to a mall or shop, the parking is a step in the journey — it’s not the end state of the journey, most of the time. So, anything we can do to make it as transparent and frictionless as possible, that’s what we try to do.”