Barcelona Revamps Use Of Parking Sensors In Downtown

Cities worldwide are relying upon technology to better manage their parking spaces. This is a look at World Sensing Fast Park System in action. The technology was installed near Barcelona's busy tourist destination, La Sagrada Familia. Tell me about what's in this area here. This area is a special area from the Council of Barcelona. It's from touring buses. This area is very near from Sagrada Familia. and the other monuments in Barcelona and here we have a lot of problems with the mobility of the buses, torrents buses. By this, the council decided three or four years ago to install a lot of sensors to control the time that the buses are stopped here. Since the Pope declared the Sagada Familla Basilica in November 2010, the number of people visiting this area has soared. The system was installed in 2015 as part of a pilot carried out by the Barcelona City Council. It uses 164 electromagnetic sensors, all installed in the ground. Those sensors then detect when a bus parks, and with the help of an IoT network, they send that occupancy information to a central management unit. With our technology, the council installs a network in the city, which is six -fox in this case, and our sensors, when you install a sensor, activate the sensors are connected the console network we don't need to install nothing only the sensors and configure the sensor with an app of mobile and go directly to the platform this is our sensor that it's very easy to install you only need 10 minutes to install make a hole very quickly install the sensor and put the glue the parking information is displayed on various panels in the area or coach drivers get updates on the app in every color you have the not sensor by sensor you have information of the area how much would you say these sensors cost the city for the city depends not first first time was very expensive and now we're speaking around installed 150 euros 150 euros by the space now previously barcelona deployed these sensors and other parts of the city to manage private vehicle parking, but under Mayor Collao that changed. That's because the Barcelona City Council is now focused on reducing the number of cars in the city center and instead prioritizes policies like the low emission zone that went into effect in January. It's an area in the city where the most polluting vehicles are restricted in a push to reduce emissions by 15%. In Barcelona, it's very good for solve situations from mobility. problems with the torrents buses sure that have the same problem with another with taxis in taxi stations too it's a very good solution for taxis in for tracks have a lot of sites in Barcelona that in my opinion this technology solves the problems in June or Biotica another Barcelona based company specializing in IOT and smarts initiatives announced it had acquired world-sensing fast park solution. Herbiotica already had a strong presence in Barcelona's market. However, the majority of its parking sensors are located outside the city center. So what does this mean for the fast park sensors we've seen deployed here? Well, I had a chance to chat with Herbiotica's chief commercial officer, Marc Genes, before this deal went through, and he seems to agree that parking sensors are useful to manage city services, taxis and buses but he doesn't believe the sensors should be deployed everywhere in the city center of big cities it makes no sense to do uh white the deployment of sensors to make guidance because at the end you have a lot of information that you can have with the smartphones uh you know that it's almost always full and uh doing guidance in a very wide area is is from our experience it makes no sense okay it's less sense to sell for me but i think it's the real But instead, what we see in the big cities, it's a good trend, it's managing the other parking spots that have a value for the city. Delivery zones, so the few parking spots that it remains are for dedicated users. So you might just see more parking sensors in Barcelona's downtown after all. They just might not be used in spaces for you and me. If you have questions on this story, be sure to hit the link below. Until next time, I'm Diana Blass reporting for Current Insights.