Matching city drivers with bays

New parking app helps property managers turn dormant assets into sources of profit. By

Ever driven around the Cape Town City Bowl, in search of parking, and thought afterwards: Well, that was worth the wait? No, me neither. With a little help from a parking app, drivers no longer need to cruise in traffic while they search for a coveted parking space: they can prebook and pay for it, or be allocated a bay by their employer or the business they are visiting.

Billions of litres of fuel are wasted every year when drivers search for parking, creating issues around mental and physical health, safety, energy consumption, traffic congestion and, especially, the environment.

And although pandemic restrictions and work-from-home arrangements reduced the demand for parking, business is returning to central business districts.

This means parking is once again becoming difficult to find – and that scarcity means it comes at a premium.

But with a technology that streamlines parking, management companies and landlords can now put their commercial properties to more efficient use.

Cape Town technology platform Parket has built a bridge between supply and demand for parking bays.

Parket founder Joshua Raphael, a civil engineer turned developer, says he recognised an opportunity in inner-city parking after seeing drivers vie for expensive street parking even though there was an abundance of parking that was not being used.

“I asked: ‘If there is so much demand and supply is right next to it, what can we do to bridge this divide and monetise assets for landlords and companies so that their dormant assets can become a source of profit?’.” Inspired to work digital efficiency into an inefficient system, Raphael started writing code for a “parking solution” in October 2018.

By January 2019, Parket was good to go. After years of refinement, the app has finally been brought into the mainstream.

Raphael and his three partners believe they have solved the “pain points” people experience when looking for parking.

Parket uses artificial intelligence to recognise vehicle licence plates. This allows registered users to drive through boomed entrances without having to activate tickets, fiddle with phones or cash or even tap tags.

Intelligent parking solutions are already widely available in shopping malls, office parks and other access-controlled sites, and parking marketplaces Rent My Bay and Park Upp are well established.

But Parket says it has incorporated these and other features into a single interface that offers hands-free access control, cashless and paperless transactions, prebooking functionality, a licence plate reader and a QR code to help drivers find parking.

For businesses with one-time or infrequent visitors, the QR access code is sent via text or instant messaging, so there’s no need to download the app.

The tech requires no effort on the part of landlords and property managers, who do not need to deal with the admin of signing up new vehicles or sourcing parking. They can also purchase more temporary parking, or maximise their existing parking bays, says Raphael.

“For example, at a site like the Christian Barnard [building in Bree Street], which might have sold 100 bays to tenants, on average, only 70 vehicles a day might be coming in to use them. It means an extra 30 bays a day could be sold. So a lot of value can be created by doing that,” he explains.

“A big thing for clients is that many people are working on rotation now so tenants don’t need the same number of parking bays that they used to, because they’re not all being utilised. So they can purchase fewer bays and our system manages all the people parking there automatically. For example, 150 employees can park in 100 bays on rotation.”

Parket’s analytics can help landlords sell parking and log empty or underutilised bays more accurately. These can be rented out per day or per hour, helping landlords to monetise them.

“This ability to sell vacant bays on a demand-led basis is exceptionally popular because of the profit it generates from an otherwise stagnant asset,” says Raphael.

Parket is available at a few sites in the Cape Town City Bowl, and will soon extend to Kloof Street, Pinelands and Claremont. By the end of the year, it will be available in Joburg, Durban and other cities.