San Diego Completes Tech Overhaul of Airport Parking

San Diego is on a mission to be one of the leading smart cities in the country. It has partnered with Current, Powered by GE to integrate smart sensors throughout the city. Now the city has taken other step, integrating a high-tech parking system at the San Diego International Airport. The frictionless technology suite addresses needs of both registered and unregistered users to create efficient traffic flow in and out of the airport parking garage and simplify the payment process.

Skidata affiliate Sentry Control Systems oversaw the project—an approximately $6 million investment—focusing first on finding parking solutions for unregistered users. “Our focus really started with the unregistered users. Airports have always deployed license plate recognition technology as a way to play defense and protect their revenue stream, not to enhance the parking experience or reduce the friction of the parking experience,” Lester Mascon, EVP of Sentry Control Systems, tells GlobeSt.com. “We added license plate recognition to enhance the experience, which meant that when someone shows up in the exit lane, the barrier will open if they didn’t owe anything. A big part of that was adding pay-on-foot features so that they could take advantage of that feature, and we added a mobile pay feature to increase the chances that they show up in the exit lane with no fee due.”

With this new infrastructure, the company was also able to accommodate registered users more efficiently. It partnered with a company to provide a reservation option and loyalty program that will ultimately help to boost parking garage revenue. “The reservation system allows people to make a parking reservation in advance, giving them a time window in which they can enter using license plate recognition and then they are able to leave within a certain period of time,” explains Mascon. “Then, there is loyalty, which gives users some form of credential and people can come and go from the airport at will and you are automatically charged for your use.”