The City of Houston has ordered 750 solar powered electronic parking meters for a 1.9 mile area of downtown capable of accepting credit cards, coins and paper currency as well as providing maps of the surrounding areas. WFI will design and deploy the dedicated 802.11g WiFi network, the first of its kind, to support the parking meters.
This project represents the first municipal parking meter system in the U.S. that does not rely on a cellular network, but instead communicates exclusively using a dedicated 802.11g WiFi Network.
The City of Houston will evaluate the performance of this WiFi network to determine if it can be expanded to assist public safety and public service employees to improve accuracy and timeliness of their duties.
WFI will use the Mesh Wi-Fi layer for Parking Meter connectivity, and WiMAX for connectivity to the network backbone. “It puts our City at the forefront in using evolving technologies to gain cost efficiencies in municipal services,” said Janis Jefferson, Deputy Director and CTO, City of Houston.
“We are pleased to provide the cutting edge parking meters to our residents and visitors, and equally pleased to have the experience of WFI to design and deploy the Wi-Fi network these meters will require,” said Liliana Rambo of the City of Houston Parking Management Division. “A primary goal of this project is to help make parking regulation, management and enforcement more efficient, and we are confident that the combined solution from ACS and WFI can help us meet this challenge.”
“WFI is assisting ACS in the installation of the wireless parking meters,” said Norman Dong, Vice President of ACS Government Solutions Group.
In addition to the wireless parking meter project with ACS, WFI was recently awarded a contract with the City of Houston Transit Authority to design and deploy a high-tech Wireless Mesh and IP Network for surveillance of 25 of Houston’s Park & Ride lots to monitor activities and deter crime. The network being installed also has the capability of allowing Houston TranStar to remotely control 156 traffic signals in west Houston.
Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas plan to cut costs by using city-wide WiFi “clouds” instead of cellular networks to connect “electronic parking meters”, reports GovTech Magazine. Houston CIO Richard Lewis, says Houston will become the first major U.S. city to manage its parking meters over a wireless network.
Seven vendors responded to Houston’s RFP, which was issued in 2004, said Liliana Rambo, assistant director of the city’s Department of Parking Management. The software will do instant credit card approval online, and the city’s back-office operations will handle all credit card processing.
The City Council approved a $15 million deal with Affiliated Computer Services in early April 2006 for a network of 1,500 multiple-space meters — 750 of which will be installed this summer — to handle 2,300 downtown parking spaces.
The other 750 will be deployed over the next five years. The meters will be attached to a 60-node mesh network built by the city, said Rambo.
The city’s wireless network promises several benefits. First, she said, the city will save money by spending $300,000 to build its own network rather than paying a private vendor $125,000 per year for access to its network.
“Within three years we will have paid less, and we will own the network,” she said.
Houston wants to replace their 800,000 meters with some 1500 “smart meters”. Seven vendors, ACS, Cale Systems, Clancy Services, Parkeon, Rhino and SGR Controls competed for the contract.
Portland has some 1,000 Electronic Parking Meters with Parkeon the major vendor and also plan to save money using WiFi connections (at $12/month). Currently they pay some $35/mo in fees. That includes the wireless CPDP connection (updated several times daily), along with additional fees from Visa for non real-time service. So real-time WiFi connections might save close to $20/month per meter or $20,000/month (for 1,000 meters). That would be $240,000/year.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Houston Gets 5 Proposals, Transportation’s Big Show, Big City WiFi Clouds, Tracking Transit, City Clouds Save Money, CDPD Gets Arrested and MAN with a Plan.
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