PARK YOUR CAR THE POLISH WAY...

The Expo programme included the conference on "Parking problems in urbanised areas" organised by the RP Association on of Transport Technicians and Engineers - Cracow Division and the Cracow University of Technology.

Improper parking or parking without a valid ticket, a fairly common phenomenon of fictitious residence-registration at city centres in order to gain discounts - these are some of the most important, parking-related issues Poland's cities discussed in the lecture lecture delivered by Mateusz Pietruch of the Communication Systems Scientific Society  at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Cracow University of Technology. The speaker raised the issue of the Traffic and Roads Act, higher parking rates and Western European cities model of penalties. He emphasized the urge of systematic examination of parking areas and users' needs as well as pointed out the need of constant cooperation targeted at monitoring of cities' parking areas.

Useful data derived from the parking meter

One of most interesting lectures was the one on the data gathered from cities' parking meters  and the data utilisation for effective monitoring and efficient traffic engineering in urban areas.

- The average parking meter registers about 60 transactions a day. The meter-stored data provides useful details for parking zones management - said Sylwia Grzegorczyk of the French Parkeon. Parkeon operates the network of 3.5 thousand parking meters in Poland. - We find out, for example, occupancy time for particular parking bay, parking peak-times, payment methods, a real-time number of single transactions. While preserving and protecting personal data, the system allows to see re-occurrence of the registration plate.  Data from the parking ticket machines assist in parking policy planning in towns and zones. They also perfectly complements other types of research.

(KK)