How Vehicle License Plate Recognition Systems Improve Parking Management
License plate recognition (LPR) is an innovative tool with advantages over traditional parking methods. LPR improves patrolling accuracy, reduces disputes, and offers drivers and managers a more convenient parking experience. To read a license plate, the camera’s line of sight must be perpendicular to the license plate surface under ideal conditions. Glare, shadows, and other factors complicate this.
Increased Security
A vehicle license plate recognition system is an excellent security solution, as it can easily recognize and read vehicle license plates even in poor lighting conditions. The ability to capture and verify vehicle data is a powerful deterrent, as it prevents unauthorized vehicles from entering parking spaces reserved for staff or tenants. ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) works by reading and recording metadata about the vehicle that enters and exits your car park, including everything from estimated optical speed to the time of day when the parking space is accessed. This information is then transmitted to a cloud-based management system, which can also be connected to payment systems and help automate the billing process. As a result, parking managers no longer need to manually check license plate numbers or compare them to a list of authorized cars. This improves patrolling accuracy and reduces the number of disputed tickets. By linking to a vehicle registration database, ANPR can automatically identify season parkers and offer them VIP services such as free parking or discounted rates. This increases user satisfaction and helps to retain loyal customers.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
In addition to reducing staff overhead and making parking management more cost-effective, License Plate Recognition systems also improve customer satisfaction. By allowing drivers to skip the need to interact with ticket machines or cashiers, vehicles can be allowed into and out of parking lots more quickly. This reduces frustration for both employees and customers. ALPRs can provide more information than traditional monitoring methods, such as a driver’s name and address and even the make and model of their car. This allows for a more personal approach to parking that improves user experience, especially in high-traffic areas. Shadows and shading can be a problem for LPR, meaning various image filters are used to help improve performance. Some of these include edge detection, which uses different colors to identify parts of the vehicle and license plate. Other solutions use multiple images to create a more precise vision for the processing engine. In addition, many systems can detect the skew of each license plate and compensate for it. The result is that fewer errors are made, and the overall design is more reliable.
Increased Revenue
LPR systems can check the vehicle registration of vehicles entering and leaving parking lots, making it easier to track and impose rules for permit holders. This eliminates human error and makes it easier to collect revenue. It also stabilizes revenue and lowers costs. These specialized cameras (ALPR or automatic license plate recognition) can capture high-quality images of vehicles’ license plates—even in low lighting conditions and at high speeds. Then, a computer system uses image-processing technology to identify and extract the vehicle’s information. This data can be matched with integrated databases, security, traffic, and parking management systems. For example, ALPR can automatically process a toll fee and deduct it from the driver’s account when the vehicle passes through a toll booth. It can also be used to oversee and improve the utilization of contract parking spaces. This minimizes administrative work and saves time and money for both car park managers and drivers. It’s no wonder that parking companies are turning to LPR to streamline their operations.
Reduced Disputes
A license plate recognition system can significantly reduce the number of disputes over parking violations. Using an ALPR solution, patrol officers no longer have to manually check each license plate against authorized parkers or consider the specific rules associated with different permit types for each vehicle. This allows the patrol to focus on other essential aspects of their job, reducing the chance of errors and making it much easier to identify cars parked in restricted areas. LPR systems use cameras to capture images of license plates, which are then processed with software that can read the alphanumeric characters on the plates. The hardware can be either fixed or mobile, which is often used by police departments to monitor vehicles on patrol. Unlike traditional CCTV, LPR systems are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. Shadows and shading can cause problems, but many advanced systems use filters to reduce these effects. They can also utilize varifocal lens camera technology to zoom into images, helping them to detect even obscured or damaged license plates.
Reduced Maintenance Costs
LPR systems require minimal human intervention, reducing strain on existing staff. In addition, they don’t take up much space compared to traditional traffic monitoring equipment and can be deployed without disrupting daily business operations. The automated nature of these systems reduces maintenance costs as well. For example, the ability to read license plates removes the need for human-crewed stations at toll plazas, allowing vehicles to be automatically billed and reducing congestion associated with gates or cash lanes. Similarly, ANPR technology can monitor parking facilities and identify violations, helping eliminate overflowing lots and increasing revenue. They can also be used to track stolen vehicles and to ensure compliance with city parking regulations.
Additionally, they can be integrated with payment systems to streamline the billing and payments process. For QSRs and other retailers, this technology can personalize customer service by recognizing their vehicle’s license plate and speeding up the drive-thru or curbside pickup process. Moreover, it can be used to validate parking permits. The system can automatically verify a customer’s registration and charge the appropriate parking fee to their account, significantly minimizing administrative duties and enhancing user experience.