Private garages’ access system, through a real-time and keyless solution, for cheaper and faster prime inner-city parking.

Project Information

ParkBee

Grant agreement ID: 683366

DOI

10.3030/683366

Project closed

EC signature date 15 June 2015

Start date 1 July 2015

End date 31 October 2015

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

PARKBEE BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ParkBee (Private garages’ access system, through a real-time and keyless solution, for cheaper and faster prime inner-city parking.)

Reporting period: 2015-07-01 to 2015-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In most European cities, individual transport has increased in the past and is still on the rise, causing major problems, including traffic congestion, high demand for parking areas, and negative environmental impacts such as air pollution. ParkBee innovation business project aims to significantly contribute to a strategic and sustainable exploitation of the unused off-street parking space, thus fulfilling today's need for fast, comfortable and sustainable urban mobility.
In parallel with the Feasibility Study, ParkBee has launched a market test in the Netherlands together with the parking app provider and the real-estate management companies. The market test has attracted huge interests of garage owners, drivers and municipalities. ParkBee started the market test with 7 garages (500 parking spots), after one month ParkBee expanded their parking database to 15 garages with 1.168 parking spots in the Netherlands, the majority of them are available for 24 hours/7 days a week. The lessons learnt in the ongoing market test will be used as a base for the further product development.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

"ParkBee has achieved the business and technical feasibility objectives defined in the PH1 proposal, by identifying profiles of key stakeholders and securing 8 garage owners for the PH2 project, conducting comprehensive analysis of customer, entry barriers and competition, preparing the IP and marketing strategy and 5 years financial projection; defining a minimum viable product, establishing the engineering and the industrialization plans. During the Feasibility Study, ParkBee has interviewed 50 inner-city drivers in order to understand the key success factors that affect the drivers’ choice of car parking. The research has identified the top 7 factors choosing the parking, ‘time saving’, ‘nearby location’, ‘safety and security’, ‘fee rate’, ‘ease of access’, ‘#of spaces’ and ‘ size of parking space’. Some of the interviewees have also highlighted an importance of the EC charging stations, since in some cities it is a serious problem to find a parking with such a service.
The Feasibility Study showed, that ParkBee will have a rapid market penetration and within first year will reach the BEP. This is due to the very asset light business model and well established partnership with the biggest parking app provider. In addition, the ParkBee will open new economic benefits not only to the garage owners and the drivers, but also to the parking decision makers – municipalities, by better organizing the existing parking.
"

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The expected outcome of the project is an intelligent off-street parking management system that has been tested on a large scale and multi-country pilot in the operational environment of three European cities. The system will have the capacity to update the garage database in real-time and to serve multiple request at the same time, thereby significantly decreasing the time millions of inner-city drivers cruise searching to park and significantly increasing parking capacity at no extra investment. The final outcome of the project is to start the full commercialization of the ParkBee parking management system in Europe. This will require specific upgrades of the ParkBee existing system, including the hardware re-engineering, the software optimization and its integration with the indoor-navigation system.

ParkBee drivers interface

ParkBee Garages in the Netherlands