Parking Control allows you to determine which vehicle may enter your parking area.  Vehicle drivers who are regular (or monthly) parkers may utilize parking control systems with a credential to access the parking area.  Additionally, transient parkers may be granted access to the parking area via payment or taking a parking ticket. 

 Upon entry, a barrier gate arm is in the down position, which requires the Parker to present a valid credential at the Access Control Pedestal or at the Entry BOXX prior to the gate arm opening. For example, a monthly Parker with an RFID proximity would present their access credential to the card reader for approval.  Once the credential has been approved for the date, time and location, the card transaction data is approved then the barrier gate arm opens.

The Pedestal, card reader, and parking control software are a key components of the Parking BOXX full featured ticketing system. 

With parking control systems, managing your property is easy and efficient. The right equipment configuration gives you control over who can access your property, what portions of your property people have access to, and for how long—all within one system. This is the beauty of automation—it gives you smarter solutions at half the cost and effort. 

Smart parking control systems come from smart planning. Choosing the right equipment is the first step in optimizing your idle space. That’s why it’s important to ask the right questions. Here are the three most important questions to ask before finalizing your parking control equipment purchase:

1. Will I be charging for parking? 

The answer to this question comes down to what type of client your facility will be servicing.  A commercial parking garage that services transient parkers (infrequent, hourly users) benefits from an on-site revenue generating system such as our full-featured or flat rate parking system. These types of systems do not require pre-authorization. In these types of systems, anyone can enter the facility but payment must be provided before exiting. 

Access control pedestals, which require credential validation but not payment, are a better alternative for facilities servicing regular parkers, such as tenants in a residential building or short-term overnight parkers such as campers at a campground. Since payment is handled outside of the parking system, at a pre-registration kiosk for campers, for example, or through electronic billing, parkers enter the facility with a pre-authorized credential such as an access card, key fob, or windshield tag.   

 2. What parking credential suits my needs?

The type of parking credential and reader that best suits your parking control system comes down to a matter of a convenience/cost analysis & volume: how many cars will be entering your facility every day?

Parkers accessing the facility will have windshield or licence plate tags that are detected by access control pedestal readers upon entry. Parkers don’t need to fumble for key cards or fobs, which makes entry easy, efficient, and fast. While long-range readers may be more convenient (no need to reach out of a window to tap your RFID card on a proximity reader) they can be a significantly higher cost for the readers as well as credentials. Also we’ve seen that these types of readers and credentials can be significantly more finicky in their setup. Interfering signals, florescent lights, and other factors may impact the reliability of such systems and we generally don’t recommend Long Range Readers. 

In comparison, Proximity, or short range, access readers are a perfect option for high reliability and general convenience for lots that want to save on costs. 

3. Will I have separate entries for separate customers?

Though we’ve talked about parking control systems serving a single type of customer, the reality is that some parking facilities will want to accommodate a mix of transient, short-term as well as long-term Parkers. When this is the case, you need to consider your transient to long-term parker ratio. 

If your facility serves a large number of long-term parkers, it’s a good idea to invest in both access control pedestal and entry/exit machines. And if the space permits, you may wish to create separate lanes for each customer type. If you have many transient and monthly customers leaving the lot at the same time, monthly customers will appreciate not having to wait behind transient parkers who slow down the exit process by paying at a machine or cashier. 

For lots that service fewer long-term parking, reader accessories can be mounted on entry/exit machines. Here, both long and short term parkers pull up to the same machine to gain ingress or egress to the facility.