Mt. Lebanon approves parking upgrades

Parking in Mt. Lebanon’s Uptown Business District looks to become a better prospect for motorists.
Commissioners on Dec. 7 awarded a contract for upgrades at the North and South garages on Washington Road and approved a measure to expand the scope of a program to collect parking data.
“We’re going to be able to upgrade all the technology to where it’s what customers coming to parking garages these days are expecting,” Andrew McCreery, municipal finance director, said about the $159,490 contract with HUB Parking Technology for a parking revenue control system.
Along with replacing entry/exit apparatuses in the garages, HUB will provide the capability of giving customers the option of paying by credit card prior to returning to their vehicles.
Paying a cashier when exiting will continue to be available, for the time being. McCreery said the practice is to be evaluated in six to 12 months to determine if it remains viable.
The upgrades will extend to other facets of parking, such as leasing spaces.
“We’re going to be able to do credit card acceptance automatically. We’re going to be able to do electronic funds transfer,” McCreery said about receiving payments from customers. “So they’re not going to have to send us a monthly check.”
Capabilities for parking validation also look to improve.
“Right now, we only have two options. This system will give us 240 options in which to customize validations for businesses along the corridor,” McCreery told commissioners. “That will really allow them to tailor what they want to provide to their patrons using our parking facilities.”
The commission also approved an expansion of its agreement with Streetline Inc. at a cost of $16,280. During a pilot program from March through September, the company embedded sensors at 95 metered spaces in the Uptown Business District, and the next phase calls for installing 74 more.
Streetline’s Parker app allows motorists to identify available spaces where sensors are placed, and eventually the software could be used for paying by mobile device, McCreery said.
The system also addresses targeted parking enforcement.
“This gives us the ability now, instead of chalking tires to monitor if you’re in a spot for two hours or longer, we now have it mobile that says, this is when you pulled in and this is how long you’ve been there,” McCreery explained.
The sensors provide data for analysis, as well.
“You’re basically running a parking demand study in real time,” McCreery said. “We’re able to get analysis to see who’s parking and what is the availability of parking within the business district.”
The data potentially could serve as a basis for a dynamic pricing system, by which premiums would be charged for certain times. For example, 90 percent of spaces in the district generally are filled between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays, according to McCreery.
The improvements represent the first steps in a five-year plan requested by the Mt. Lebanon Parking Facilities Board and developed by municipal staff members.
“This really addresses a lot of issues with our parking garages that we had complaints about and that we’ve heard for quite a while now,” Commissioner Coleen Vuono said. “So I think this is wonderful.”