Virginia piloting underground technology to assist in locating parking spots
ARLINGTON, Va. (UI) — The three-year pilot project aims to improve the user experience for metered parking spaces in two key commercial-residential corridors in Arlington, Va.
The County is piloting a system that combines occupancy technology and pricing tools to provide better information on parking availability and influence demand for metered curb space.
The pilot project includes about 4,500 metered parking spaces. The spaces are in two County Planning corridors: Rosslyn-Ballston and Richmond Highway. Most of the spaces included in the pilot will be on-street parking.
System design, installation, testing, and initial data collection will occur in the first year of the pilot project, while the second and third years are dedicated to data collection and pricing calibration. Community outreach and engagement occur throughout all three years of the pilot project.
The pilot will use in-ground sensors to provide real-time occupancy information for each of the parking spaces included in the project area. The sensors can detect the presence or absence of a vehicle, and duration-of-stay can be calculated.
No camera technology is being used, and no personally-identifying information can be collected by the system. Once initial occupancy data has been gathered, the project team anticipates applying the pricing tools to the pilot project corridors on a quarterly basis, changing prices up or down across the 4,500 parking spaces included in the pilot to meet the goals of the pilot project.
The County’s Master Transportation Plan (MTP) Parking and Curbside Element, Policy 5 states that Transportation Staff should “Utilize parking meter pricing strategies that vary by hour and location to better match parking availability and demand.”
In order to meet this Board-adopted transportation policy, the Parking team, part of the Transportation Engineering & Operations Bureau, applied for and received a $5.4 million grant from the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Innovation and Technology Transportation Fund to install and test technology that would allow staff to make changes to the price of parking across the metered parking network to encourage more efficient use of the system. This pilot project will allow the Parking team to test the efficacy of this technology and determine if it is the right way to achieve the MTP’s stated goals.
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