City of Kerava: Digital parking permits reduce abuse and make it easier to grant permits
In a city that uses digital parking permits, parking attendants don't have to scrape car windshields. Many municipalities and cities have decided to abandon paper parking permits and switch to digital parking permits.
Paper parking permits pose some challenges and even problems, as they can be easily forged, even with a photocopier. In addition, issuing paper parking permits takes time and resources from already overworked officials and other people who manage permits. Paper parking permits have had to be applied for and collected from the municipal or city office during office hours, which may have been inconvenient for many working motorists. Officials have maintained parking permits in various spreadsheet programs, from which data has been searched and edited manually, which has slowed down the process even further.
eParking has brought a solution to these challenges in the form of digital parking permits. A digital parking permit is a parking permit in electronic form in the eParking application. Anyone who needs a parking permit simply needs to download the eParking application and log in as a user. You can easily manage your own parking permit through the application: the application handles payment, editing and cancellation of the permit.
You can apply for a parking permit at any time of the day or week in the eParking application or browser version. The parking permit remains stored in the application until it is cancelled. It is possible to attach the registration numbers of several cars to the permit, one of which is valid at a time. Changing the active registration number is convenient in the application. This means that it is not necessary to apply for a separate parking permit for each car in a family or work group, but the same permit is valid for several cars.
Digital parking permits also significantly reduce the workload of parking permit administrators and make it easier to maintain permits. Digital parking permits do not need to be printed and laminated, as parking control is based on scanning the car's license plate.
The city of Kerava has introduced eParking digital parking permits in 2019. Currently, digital parking permits are used by various employee groups, such as home nurses and teaching and education staff. Through the eParking system, city guests also receive a digital parking permit. As a new entity, Kerava has introduced business parking permits. In addition, Kerava is planning to expand digital parking permits to resident parking. To this end, Kerava is already mapping out possible areas where digital resident parking permits would be used.
Mikko Rastela, traffic planner for the city of Kerava, has been pleased with the eParking system and digital parking permits. Rastela says that the workload related to parking permits has been significantly reduced. Digital parking permits also make work clearer and make it easier to resolve errors. According to Rastela, digital parking permits are significantly more unambiguous compared to the old printed paper parking permits. The problem with paper permits was forgeries: it was difficult to check the authenticity of the permit. An attempt was made to prevent abuse by renewing paper permit slips from time to time. However, this has been eliminated since Kerava introduced the eParking system.
Rastela says that parking permits are now approved easily and quickly. Digital parking permits have also made parking enforcement easier in Kerava: enforcement is also handled digitally by scanning the car's license plate number, and the parking supervisor does not have to worry about the authenticity of the parking permit.
For the reference, Mikko Rastela, traffic planner for the City of Kerava, was interviewed via email.
