Bright Lights, Smart City: Las Vegas Drives Futuristic Mobility
September, 2019
As a vibrant cultural, entertainment, and business hub, the City of Las Vegas has become a leader in smart cities with innovative technologies like pothole prediction, smart trash cans, and connected traffic intersections that transform the municipality’s infrastructure and facilitate growth.
Standardizing under a single technology platform across Las Vegas’ downtown garages created new efficiencies in operations at every level.
However, before 2018, the city’s parking services lagged in terms of the ability to adapt to changing needs. Hoping to implement some necessary improvements in three downtown parking garages—each with a different supplier—Las Vegas knew it needed to find a long-term technology partner.
Refusing to settle for multiple vendors, each providing services at one of the city garages, Las Vegas Parking Services sought out a partner that could transform the city’s parking technology to meet the demands of a steadily growing economy. In October of 2018, Las Vegas’ parking infrastructure was transformed to complement the other elements of the municipality’s smart city initiatives. They chose Flash Parking.
A “Smart” Transition
Standardizing under a single technology platform across Las Vegas’ downtown garages created new efficiencies in operations at every level—from top management to the individual user. From the first days of planning to the final day of the installation, Las Vegas saw minimal disruption to its regular operations, which created a seamless transition for city employees, residents, and guests to enjoy the newly elevated parking experience. Today, powerful real-time data services comprise a 360-degree view of operations and offer actionable business intelligence for city planning and growth prospects.
The cloud-based platform simplified setup, management, and updates on 19 entry/exit kiosks, seven cash machines, and seven pay-on-foot kiosks installed at area garages that serve casinos, entertainment venues, offices, courthouses, and city hall. Highly configurable to meet the individual needs of each garage, these unique kiosks boast cloud-based software and straightforward physical hardware, which allow garages to customize functions, perform simple maintenance, and integrate new high-tech components at any time.
The Improved Guest Experience
The intuitive user interface on the new kiosks creates value for customers with an interactive touch-screen coupled with modern credit card readers and barcode scanners that make for quick interaction with the technology. If a user has trouble, a two-way video intercom system is readily available for instant, 24/7 support.
Bluetooth beacon access is facilitated by the mobile app, which is utilized by a rapidly growing number of its contract parkers. By registering with their phone number, contract parkers can be granted garage access from a phone in the palm of their hand. This new technology is appreciated among contract parking users who can enter and exit garage gates in seconds without rolling down the window and who no longer have to worry about misplacing prox cards.
An Asset to Economic Development
The expansion of new developments, population growth, and cultural diversification in a modern city requires local infrastructures to evolve with future needs. This challenge is exemplified in the arrival of two additional Las Vegas city parking garages in July and August of 2019.
Serving a performing arts center, planned convention center, and adjacent hotels, the city’s new garages will join the existing network of locations functioning on the cloud-based platform. The flexibility of the platform’s open-API design will help garages spur economic development in surrounding areas. Seamless integrations with eParking reservation software, hotel property management systems (PMS), and other third-party programs make this system an ideal partner for agile customization and upgrades.
For instance, a hotel requiring custom valet services to commence construction can request the addition of a valet feature to the existing platform and receive the same user-centric services and exceptional management capabilities.
Future-Ready Parking
The new system’s most valuable offering to the City of Las Vegas is the keen ability to evolve with a changing society. As personal technology rapidly advances, public services around the country are struggling to keep up. Las Vegas is offering the technologies the city’s users want today and is ready to deliver the technologies they demand tomorrow.
On the powerful cloud-based platform, service offerings can be instantly and remotely scaled up and down, modified, or custom tailored to meet the unique needs of any facility. As new technologies emerge, upgrades on existing machines can be performed at the component level to save time and money.
What’s Next
The leadership at Las Vegas Parking Services understands that a parking strategy goes far beyond just controlling access and revenue; a parking technology provider should also deliver an ecosystem of future-ready mobility solutions that will evolve with technologies like ride-sharing services, driverless cars, and frictionless access to better serve urban communities.
The powerful cloud-born software and feature-rich hardware will play a valuable role in the city’s multifaceted approach to advancing its smart city infrastructure. As more pieces of the smart city puzzle are put into place, 23 million annual visitors will directly experience the benefits of Las Vegas’ unique ability to strategically implement future-ready technology for maximum impact.
Carlos Hernandez is the VP of R&D at FlashParking. He can be reached at carlos.hernandez@flashparking.com.
