Football season is on the horizon. In a few short weeks, Saturday and Sunday nights — and Thursday, Friday and Monday for that matter — will be dedicated to the most celebrated sport in the U.S.
The thrill of the game and the camaraderie keeps fans returning to the stands year after year, but sometimes the fight to the stadium is enough to keep even the most dedicated fan at home. Some new technology, however, has managed to turn that frown into a touchdown.
ParkHub is one of the most recent players within the parking tech space. Launched in 2010, this parking management software solution is managing to extract the pain from the parking game.
"Surveys have been done in every league across the nation, and parking has always been in one of the top three highest-rated pain points for all organizations," said Jarrod Fresquez, ParkHub's chief marketing officer. "Every venue in the United States is experiencing the exact same thing."
What began as a cashless way to manage parking lots, ParkHub now offers four varying products that can not only provide the transactions, but also add a validation and reservation layer to the mix. Their platform and integrated product lines are aimed to provide the customer experience while increasing revenue for the parking provider.
With their latest product, Plan2Park, event guests can prepay for their parking spot online, access spot availability prior to arrival and even view a turn-by-turn point of entry at the lot location. Guests can plan their entire experience as soon as they buy their event tickets.
When it comes to football, two NFL teams have signed on with ParkHub — the Dallas Cowboys (AT&T Stadium) and the San Francisco 49ers (Levi's Stadium) . The most recent venue to launch the Plan2Park platform was Denver's Pepsi Center — home of the NBA's Denver Nuggets and the NHL's Colorado Avalanche.
Parking at Denver's Pepsi Center just got a lot easier thanks to ParkHub's Plan2Park product.
ParkHub isn't the only pioneer aiming to make parking more pleasant. As the driverless vehicle preps for its public debut, urban planners and city leaders are seeking ways to also integrate the tech and prepare for the transition.
Smarter — and often smaller — cars can mean smaller spaces for the next generation parking garage. In fact, a research study done by McKinsey & Co. predicts that by 2035, the need for parking should decline by more than 5.7 billion square meters in the United States.
China has recently created a parking robot, aimed to fit in the tightest of spaces. The laser-guided "Geta" (get a car) robot slides under your vehicle, picks it up, finds a parking space in the lot and needs just two minutes to park a vehicle. Mainland China is expected to have more than 200 million cars by 2020, the government says in a recent Reuters article, meaning that finding space to park could become increasingly difficult.
Fresquez agrees the driverless revolution is upon us, but cautions that we aren't quite there yet.
"The future of parking is very clear," he said. "While the autonomous vehicle is coming, there are several phases of infrastructure and market education that need to go into place before that happens. That being said, I do not see a point in my lifetime where everyone will be in driverless cars. There will always be the human element, so companies like ours have to plan for both occurrences."
Circling the garage is a ritual many pigskin fans have become accustomed to — testing both their patience and time. Technology, however, is moving in this space, offering solutions to streamline the process and take the pain out of the game before the game.
