PARKING FACILITIES

One unique strength of the Department of Community and Economic Development is the inclusion of the Parking Facilities Division.

The Parking Facilities staff is committed to providing high-quality customer service to ensure the needs of our residents, visitors, and workforce are met. This is done through an entrepreneurial model that uses the latest technologies and data to enhance the user experience and develop a parking system that supports the active and thriving Downtown environment of tomorrow.

BUDGET AND REVENUE

The FY2016 operating budget for Parking Facilities Division was approximately $12.7 million.

The revenue from our parking operations increased, in part, due to our ability to deploy technological upgrades to the City’s parking meters in calendar year 2015 (CY2015). These upgrades have helped to improve overall parking meter functionality, provide data that allows the Parking Facilities team to reduce downtime of out-of-service meters and implement predictive enforcement in high traffic areas during peak hours.

Figure 5 outlines the increases in revenue in FY2016.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Cincy EZPark The City of Cincinnati has partnered with Conduent (formally Xerox) for on-street parking services since 2014. After bringing the first iteration of the City’s mobile parking application, PassportParking, launched in 2015, Conduent and Passport delivered a new Cincy EZPark-branded application to provide more convenient payment options for customers in Cincinnati.

In upcoming years, we hope to build real-time parking availability information, bus schedules, bike share availability and passes, and more into the application.

Revenue FIGURE 5: PARKING FACILITIES DIVISION REVENUE 2015 $8.7M 2016 $10.9M Year over year Increase (%) 25%

Cincy EZPark is now available at all onstreet smart parking meters. With Cincy EZPark, smartphone users can: • Purchase parking using a debit or credit card. • Get alerts when meter time is about to expire. • Extend time remotely (up to the maximum allotted time). • View personal parking history.

The Cincy EZPark application will carry current PassportParking users’ account features, profile, and stored credit cards. Users will be prompted to sign in using the same credentials (email address or phone number) and pin number. The new application also contains a feature that allows merchants to set up and fund accounts to validate parking for customers.

Looking ahead, with the improvements we have made to both the PassportParking and Cincy EZPark applications, we expect pay-by-cell parking usage to become the preferred payment method for on-street parking throughout Cincinnati. Parking Improvements In response to parking data and recommendations received from Conduent, the Parking Facilities Division implemented several improvements to the City’s parking system. These include redefining parking zones, institution of a predictive enforcement process, and the changeover of single-space meters to multi-space kiosks.

Looking ahead, we believe DCED’s work with Conduent will continue to deliver useful data for more effective service delivery, and will enable Parking Facilities to maintain its focus on data-driven technology to enhance the parking customer experience.

On-Street Parking Improvements To make our on-street parking system more accessible, Parking Facilities helped to facilitate the lowering of 1,800 meter poles to meet the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility height requirements. Additionally, signage and decals were replaced to provide more information to users and enhance the aesthetics of our parking systems throughout Cincinnati.