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BPA NEWS
Going Dutch PROVES AN EYE-OPENER
Anne Snelson attended Intertraffic as a first- time exhibitor. She was amazed at the diversity of parking knowledge and technology on display
A
lthough RingGo has exhibited at several overseas shows, Intertraffic Amsterdam marked
• The sheer cheek of the Chinese party of
my first engagement in support of the brand internationally. Uncertain what to expect, I found the breadth, scope and variety of individuals that visited our stand breathtaking. They included both the arcane and the frankly bizarre:
• The gentleman from Syria (can improved
12 that arrived, cameras in hand, some sidelining us with chat while their colleagues meticulously photographed every inch of our stand, including, quite systematically each and every slide of our rolling presentations.
• Visitors from India, for whom automatic 12
parking technology really be their highest priority?) who explained that while liking our ideas he couldn’t contemplate using a solution that relied on GPS positioning, as for military reasons the Americans had ‘switched it off’; and
number plate recognition (ANPR) was similarly attractive but impractical, explaining that…’many licence plates are painted by hand, with additional images
MAY 2012
included by the artist’ – a technical challenge we could see our stand partners, the camera car providers SEA, were not entirely keen to take on.
There were several areas that put me, as a representative of our UK industry, slightly to shame. Our lack of international language fluency is certainly one. I lost count of the number of nations whose visitors were quite happy to discuss the technicalities of parking, and indeed the finer details of RingGo, in a language other than their own.
A learning process
And the speed of action demonstrated by other nations is impressive too, Estonia, being one such example. Despite parking controls and enforcement being introduced just seven years ago, 96 per cent of parking payments are now made by phone (the remaining four per cent by scratchcard). Their representatives were interested in our advanced digital parking solution. But with the UK’s historic dependence on machines, I felt I might be better learning from them.
The biggest surprise? Quite simply that so few attended from the UK. We met
representatives of cities, regions and states – from South America to South Africa – that had taken annual leave to attend Intertraffic because they felt it worth their time (and, in many cases, their own money) to attend the show. For them the overriding imperative was to learn what was happening in the world of parking and take that knowledge back to benefit their local situation. There were honourable exceptions, of course, not least some of the UK industry’s better known consultants, no doubt catching up on the latest trends. It was heartening to see a sprinkling of UK-based enforcement operators, together with leading sales representatives from most of the equipment manufacturers with which we are familiar in the UK. In terms of direct representatives of UK local authorities, however, we saw only two among the many thousands of attendees.
A breeding ground of ideas Having the opportunity to see more than 800 exhibitors from 45 countries displaying every possible form of parking and traffic equipment, broadened my view of the possible. Combine this with a steady stream of circulating individuals – international municipalities, consultants and operators, with their own experiences and ideas – it is undoubtedly a hot- house for discussion and strategy generation. I left with a deeper understanding of two things: firstly, what we in the UK parking market take for granted; and secondly, a realisation of just how many alternative parking processes and technologies exist elsewhere.
ABOUT the AUTHOR: Anne Snelson is marketing manager for RingGo, (Cobalt Telephone Technologies).
www.britishparking.co.uk
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