GB2197100A

GB2197100A - System for control of admission of vehicles to a parking place

Info

Publication number: GB2197100A
Application number: GB08626745A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Ian Carey Hilton
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1986-11-08
Filing date: 1986-11-08
Publication date: 1988-05-11
Also published as: GB8626745D0

Abstract

The occupancy of a parking place is monitored; vehicles possessing entitlement are admitted when there is a vacancy; and entitlements are issued at a holding place, on signal from control, up to a limit on the number of vehicles entitled but not yet admitted. Vehicles may be admitted in turn by time of issue of entitlement or of entry to holding place or of booking. A parking place may be served by several holding places; a holding place may serve several parking places. The system facilitates removal of queues at parking places, reduction of searching traffic, and allocation of capacity to preferred parkers; it can substitute parking near the holding place for town centre parking, and promote patronage of 'Park and Ride' services. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION System for control of admission of vehicle to a parking place Queues of vehicles waiting to enter commonly extend beyond any queueing area within a parking place. They occupy land that might be used for some other purpose, obstruct movement of people and other vehicles, pollute the air with their exhaust discharges, and detract from the visual environment.

Drivers may search a town centre until they find what they judge to be an acceptably short queue; or may join the first parking queue they encounter rather than risk losing their place in that queue. When, as is usual, they lack the information which would enable them to discern which parking place would be their best choice, they are liable to contribute to traffic congestion and/or to join a queue which, all things considered, is not the best.

Parking lost time is generally not minimised, and the town benefits less from its parking stock than it might.

According to the present invention the admission of vehicles to a parking place may be controlled through a system involving conferment of entitlement at another place, herein termed a holding place, the system comprising: apparatus, located at a holding place, used to confer entitlement to park at the parking place, operated by signal from a system control centre, and adapted to generate a signal indicating the issue of an entitlement; apparatus, located at the parking place, used to admit vehicles possessing valid entitlement to park, operated by signal from a system control centre, and adapted to generate a signal indicating the admission of a vehicle; apparatus adapted to generate a signal indicating the departure of a vehicle from the parking place; and a system control means adapted to collate signals from the apparatus, and to generate signals for transmission to the apparatus in such manner as to regulate the number of entitlements valid at any instant in time for gaining admission to the parking place.

By means of the invention the queue at a parking place may be removed or may be limited to some predetermined number of vehicles; and travel in search of a parking place at which to park is rendered unnecessary.

The system may contain one parking place or several, and one holding -place or several; within a system a parking place may be served by one or more of the holding places, and a holding place may serve one or more of the parking places.

At a holding place which serves more than one parking place, there may be one queue or separate queues for each parking place served, Incorporation in the system of user booking for a specific parking place, and/or of the recording of vehicle entry to the holding place, may be used as means of conferring entitlement to park on vehicles in the same sequence as that of booking or entry. At the parking place vehicles may be admitted, from amongst those present, in the same sequence as their entitlements were issued.

The several queues for a parking place which is served by more than one holding place may be regarded as components of a single, composite queue. Entitlements might be issued at the various holding places in turn, perhaps having regard to the lengths of the individual queues. Preferably, by use of time of booking or of time of entry to holding place, they may be issued to vehicles in sequence in the composite queue.

At a holding place vehicle users may be provided with information to aid their choice of parking place: locations of parking places and routes to them, and the locations of places and facilities which users may wish to access; parking tariffs and restrictions on length of stay and opening hours; the number of spaces at each parking place; and either the length of the composite queue for each parking place served or, preferably, the duration of the wait, termed here vehicle access time, from the current time when a user is choosing the parking place at which to park to time of admission to the parking area there.

The system may be used for other or additional purposes to those of queue transference, reduction of congestion from searching vethiclesl environmental improvement, and aid to vehicle users in selecting a place at which to park. It can facilitate the allocation of parking space to certain groups of users, and/or the use of different tariffs and/or restrictions on length of stay for certain groups of users.

It may be used, in combination with a parking place nearby and conveniently accessible from the holding place, to lessen parking demand at the parking places. It may be used with a 'Park and Ride' passenger transport service and parking area, when the system can serve to promote use of the 'Park and Ride' service.

An instance of some of these additional purposes concerns a hypothetical parking place ideally located for some tourist attraction but liable to be filled by commuters and/or by shoppers. At the parking place there are two admission points, one reserved for vehicles holding entitlement issued at a holding place. Whenever there is a vacancy entitled vehicles have priority. The tariff for vehicles using the non-priority admission point is designed to encourage short-stay parking by rates for durations exceeding that necessary for a quick shopping trip which vehicle users regard as punitive. Admission by the non-priority admission point is restricted insuch manner as to ensure that the parking place is not full at a time of day when it is known that tourist demand is likely to rise.

The tariff for vehicles using holding places is higher that that for short-stay non-priority users and is designed to discourage long-stay parking by rates which commuters regard as punitive. Where the holding place is conveni ently accessible by shoppers the differences between tariffs may be made greater than where it is less convenient, and similarly for commuter parking.

A specific embodiment of the invention will now be described by way of example. The embodiment relates to a parking place served by one holding place (Fig. 1). At the parking place occupancy is monitored. By means of the control system signals from the parking place are used to activate entitlement issue apparatus at the holding place. Entitlement issuing may involve issue of a token to the vehicle user and/or use of a recognition apparatus and/or identification of vehicle, perhaps by coding in the registration number, or of the vehicle user. Entitlements are issued to successive vehicle users up to the practical capacity of the parking system.

Practical capacity may be the practical capacity of the parking place under prevailing circumstances of operation, or it may be such greater number of vehicles as will ensure that the number of entitled vehicles awaiting admission at the entry to the parking place does not exceed some predetermined number. Such number may be determined in relation to queue storage capacity at the parking place entry point. On occasions when the rate of arrival of entitled vehicles is liable to exceed the dynamic capacity of the parking place for vehicle admission the issue of entitlement may be regulated in appropriate manner, perhaps by progressive limitation as the parking place fills of the number of vehicles entitled but not yet admitted and/or by control of the time intervals between successive issues of entitlement.After the parking place occupancy has reached "full" entitlements are issued at the holding place only on receipt of signal from control, as vacancies arise at the parking place or when an entitlement expires.

At the parking place entry point successive entitled vehicles are admitted on recognition of entitlement. Recognition may involve examination of a token issued at the holding place and/or use of a recognition apparatus and/or identification of vehicle or user previously recognised or identified at the holding place.

Vehicles not possessing valid entitlement are refused admission to the parking place. Entitlement issued at the holding place might be rendered invalid, for instance, on presentation for admission of a vehicle other than that used at the holding place or on expiry of a period of validity conferred at the time of issue. Period of validity may be coded on the entitlement token or may be communicated from the entitlement issue point to the entitlement validity check point at the parking place.

Entitlement checking and admission to a parking space may be separated; for instance, by checking at the entry point to the parking place followed, perhaps after a wait in a waiting area, by admission of entitled vehicles to the parking area at an admission point. The functioning of the system illustrated in Fig. 1 is exemplified in Fig. 2.

A second embodiment by way of example relates to one or more parking places served by one or more holding places at which the current state of queueing or waiting for access to the parking place is indicated to vehicle users.

At the holding place vehicle users decide whether or not to wait there for an entitlement to park at a parking place served by that holding place. Optionally, a parking place nearby may confer a choice between waiting for entitlement and proceeding on foot or perhaps by a 'Park and Ride' passenger tansport service.

Where a holding place serves only one parking place, vehicle users may queue for issue of entitlement to park there. Where it serves more than one parking place, and a signal from a particular place actuates issue of an entitlement, the entitlement may be taken by the user first in the queue; if rejected, it may be offered to users in turn until taken.

Alternatively, there may be a separate queue for each parking place served. When the lengths of separate queues are monitored they may be indicated to vehicle users to aid their choice of parking place; preferably, their lengths may be used together with occupancy data from the parking place and with historical data on parking duration, to provide and indicate predicted vehicle access times to individual parking places.

Fig. 3 illustrates a set of five parking places each served from the same three holding places. Communication between data handling devices may be direct, as here, or may involve use of a central control centre as illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 4.

Fig. 5 shows any one of the holding places with any one of the parking places in a system of separate queueing. In this example rank order of arrival at the holding place may be retained to establish rank order for the selected parking place, and this may be retained until admission to the parking area, by means of the separation of recording of arrival and of booking for the parking place. Retention of rank order is particularly appropriate where many users of the information display are strangers to the area and at times when the interval between successive admissions is substantial.

The functioning of the apparatus as the user progresses from entry at the holding place to exit at the parking place is described in Fig. 6 in terms of action by the apparatus located at the entry point, in the information display area, at the booking point and at the entitlement issue point, all at the holding place, and at the entry point, the parking area admission point, and the exit point of the parking place.

Some signals in the control system are shown.

Queue length may be taken as the difference in rank number for admission between the most recently admitted vehicle and the most recently booked vehicle, less vehicles which depart from the holding place without entitlement and less vehicles whose entitlement has expired. Alternatively it may be taken as that number plus some of those vehicles whose arrival has been recorded but which have not yet booked.

Vehicle access time is the interval between the current time when access time is being indicated to a vehicle user and the vehicle passing the parking area admission point. It may be produced and indicated by the means described in Patent Application "Time indication system for indicating a time of access to facility or service" - (Application No. 8625547).

Its production, in the case of queue length being defined by the most recently booked vehicle, is illustrated inFig. 7. In the Fig. 11 is the access time on occasions when the parking place is full and vehicles are queueing-for admission. On occasions when it is not full and rate of entry to the queue exceeds the dynamic capacity of the parking place admission or entry points, access time may be given by 12. Access time cannot be less than the sum of transaction times at the holding place and the parking place and travel time between the two places, 13.

Claims

1. A system for the control of admission of vehicles to a parking place through conferment of entitlement at another place, termed a holding place, the system comprsing: apparatus, located at a holding place, used to confer entitlement to park at the parking place, operated by signal from a system control centre, and adapted to generate a signal indicating the issue of an entitlement; apparatus, located at the parking place, used to admit vehicles possessing valid entitlement to park, operated by signal from a system con troi centre, and adapted to generate a signal indicating the admission of a vehicle; apparatus adapted to generate a signal indicating the departure of a vehicle from the parking place; and a system control means adapted to collate signals from the apparatus, and to generate signals for transmission to the apparatus in such manner as to regulate the number of entitlements valid at any instant in time for gaining admission to the parking place.

2. System, as claimed in Claim 1, as illustrated in Fig. 2.

3. System, as claimed in Claim 1, wherein conferment of entitlement to park is conferred on vehicles in the same sequence as that of their use of further apparatus used to book for the parking place.

4. System, as claimed in Claim 1, wherein conferment of entitlement to park is conferred on vehicles in the same sequence as that of their being recorded as passing the entry point of the holding place by the use of further apparatus used to record entry.

5. System, as claimed in Claim 1, wherein admission to the parking area at the parking place is given to vehicles which have reached the parking place entry point in the same sequence as that of their entitlements.

6. System, as claimed in Claims 3, 4 and 5, and illustrated in Figs. 5 and 6.

7. System, as claimed in Claim 1, wherein vehicles access time(s) to parking place(s) are indicated at the holding place, and as illustrated in Figs. 6 and 7.