Cernusco sul Naviglio is a municipality with just over thirty thousand inhabitants on the outskirts of Milan. Like many other towns around the city, it faces a twofold challenge; on the one hand, to accommodate the parking needs of citizens who get to the city center to shop and commute, and on the other to provide parking areas for those who decide to reach Milan on a daily basis via the underground stations of Cernusco sul Naviglio and Villa Fiorita.
Providing a seamless parking experience to both commuters and local drivers was a priority for the Municipality, that has selected HUB Parking Italia, Flowbird, Tetris Easy Parking and Intercomp S.p.A. for an ambitious project: facilitate mobility, improve traffic around busy areas such as metro stations and the town center, in a sustainable way.
The project is thus the result of an efficient synergy among international excellence centers, and is led by HUB Italian branch based in Cologno Monzese, Milano. It has allowed the Municipality to control 1663 parking stalls through a smart parking system, collecting their real-time data into a single management platform.
The Council of Cernusco sul Naviglio wished to renovate the urban parking areas in order to provide drivers with an easier parking experience and to decrease traffic congestion during peak hours. For lane stations, hardware and software equipment, they chose HUB Italia in order to level up the existing technology and innovation, to facilitate urban mobility.
HUB Italia team from Cologno Monzese worked side by side with the Municipality to cover 4 off-street and 3 on-street areas, for a total of 1663 parking stalls. The renewal of the technologies that regulate the parking areas also coincided with the arrival of a new operator, Tetris Easy Parking, which is responsible for the maintenance, monitoring, enforcement and revenue management of all paid car parks in Cernusco sul Naviglio.
One of the challenges that HUB Italia faced was to operate on all the areas without interrupting the daily service, an operation that has been hassle-free for all the citizens. The new areas are now equipped with a total of 15 lanes, 4 automatic pay stations, 2 manual pay stations, 6 pay & display machines, predisposition to integrate all-in-one parking app, JPass.
Technology wise, HUB provides the ultimate solutions in the parking industry: such as QR code reading, BLE, NFC, proximity cards.
HUB Parking Technology installed ParQube cabinets in the lanes of off-street areas and they are con-trolled and managed by JMS, the HUB web-based parking management software. JMS, in fact, allows to manage multiple parking areas with a single tool, from a single control room and can support the manager in every activity. In particular, 4 distinct JMS Local - one for each of the areas - were equipped and used under a JMS Central, that acts as a centralized control room for the municipality staff to access all data at a glance.
JMS proved to be the ideal software for roadside areas thanks to JMS OnStreet. The software makes it possible to consolidate all the payment data of the integrated parking meters, as well as the status data of each individual stall. The latter are collected via smart Intercomp sensors drowned in asphalt, which communicate with the software in real time. The data originated by the parking meters and sensors are managed by a Virtual Connector that informs the operator if there are unpaid, expired or regular stops. In this way Tetris Easy Parking, which is in charge of maintenance, utilities management and 24h/24h video surveillance of the parking areas, can control the parking lots remotely, relieving the Municipality from these activities.
The innovations, however, do not only concern the management of parking areas from the point of view of the Municipality and Tetris, but also affect citizens. Thanks to JPass, HUB’s mobile app for drivers, users can easily find, book, access, pay and exit parking spaces using their smartphone. The app is customized with the branding and colors of the municipality, further enhancing the user experience by making it even friendlier.
In case drivers find they need to extend their parking time, they can do so from the comfort of the app, without having to go to the meter or use cash at pay stations. The app is meant to provide citizens with detailed information on the availability of parking spaces across the city.
Digitization of the entire parking process goes even further, and completes with the integration of a very popular access & payment method: from spring 2020, it will be possible to access off-street parking areas without a ticket, thanks to Telepass long-distance readers; in these cases, payment is made cashless, and the overall parking experience even more convenient.