With months of restricted travel and thousands of planes unflown, major international airports like Toronto Pearson have faced a number of operational challenges since the start of the recent global pandemic.
On a regular day, Toronto Pearson International Airport sees approximately 130,000 people coming through the facility, which quickly decreased to a total of 2,000 during the lockdown. More recently, Pearson reported that traffic is steadily picking up to approximately 8,000 travellers per day. With travel restrictions starting to ease, airports are being tasked to assess their current processes and how they plan to evolve and adapt in a post-pandemic environment. With these new measures in place, one major consideration is how they plan to manage parking flow and traffic across the airport.
Like many international airports, Pearson has established a plan to safely reopen their facility, which includes new sanitation measures and limiting the number of people allowed inside the facility. This means that for the most part, family and friends dropping travellers off will no longer be allowed to escort them into the airport or wait for them at arrivals. While this new policy will be enforced inside of the airport, this will also impact parking operations within the facility. For example, these new changes are likely to increase traffic and bottlenecks in short-term parking spots and drop-off areas. On a regular day, these parking areas at an airport have limited patrolling, so it’s now become even more essential for airports to pivot and implement new enforcement measures as these lots gain more traffic.
How can parking software help?
In an effort to limit contact, airports are introducing automated sanitation measures with the help of cleaning robots, contactless technologies and check-in systems. With parking being one of the most common touchpoints in any airport, providing safe and contactless solutions is also fundamental at this time – this is where parking technology comes into play.
Parking management software can help airports respond quicker and more effectively once pre-pandemic travel numbers resume. With functions such as easy mobile payment, contactless license plate recognition and access control systems, airport managers can use this software to ensure the health, safety and security of their visitors and facility at all times.
As airports introduce a new way of doing things, these automated solutions will make it a lot easier for travellers to adapt to the new systems in place and achieve compliance. Parking software allows parkers to make payments via their mobile phones, while helping enforcement officers easily identify and issue violations in a contactless way. It’s also an extremely cost-effective and agile way to improve safety, simplify enforcement and guide parkers as new changes occur at the airport.
From a management standpoint, parking software will also help airports gain insight on how their different lots are being used so they can properly allocate their enforcement resources. With short-term parking likely to build up, this software will help to streamline traffic and make for a more efficient process overall.
At SecurePark, we offer cloud-based parking solutions that easily adapt to your specific needs. They are cost-effective, accessible, convenient and assist you in providing a better parking experience for everyone involved. To learn more about how we can help, contact us today.
Parking management tools designed to make parking management easier.