PT the Auditor
Technology South of the Border and Overseas
Over Thanksgiving week, the master and I had the oppor- tunity to visit the 2011 TranspoQuip Latin America expo
in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Aside from the PT and IPI group of speakers, this was not an event that drew many Americans. The expo was about more
than parking; it was trans- portation as a whole – rail, sea- ports, airports, highways, event/stadiums (Brazil will host both the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Sum- mer Olympics) and local street traffic control devices. The PARCS section of the
Stop reading, pull out your cellphone and snap the QR code in the cartoon below.
show was not as large as we have seen at some U.S. shows; however, I did not see a single sys- tem or piece of equipment being offered by the traditional system vendors we are accustomed to seeing in the U.S. What this did permit was an unbiased look at systems and equipment that I have not seen at U.S. shows. I found three items of particular interest: Quick Response (QR) two-dimensional barcode. Now stop
reading, pull out your cellphone and snap the QR code in the car- toon below to see where and how quickly it will take you to a
source. (If you haven’t done so, down- load a QR app from your phone’s app store; it’s free and takes just a few seconds.) We are seeing these QR codes in print, on signs and now in the parking industry. It’s a method of providing a valida- tion or a coupon (and, as intro- duced at the NPA show, a way to gain entry and pay at a parking facility). The application I observed in Sao Paulo was the QR code on a monthly access card. Scan the barcode and you were inside your monthly account, which was hosted on
the PARCS at the garage level. I repeat, the garage level, not in the corporate mainframe in Chicago, Nashville, TN, San Francisco, or Hartford, CT, but right in the garage-level PARCS. I could do updates to the data in my account, print an
invoice, make a credit card payment, see my card usage for the past 30 days, and leave an electronic message for the system oper- ator and receive a confirmation and/or a receipt! Electronic Wallet/Purse. This is an adaption of near-field
communication (NFC) technology. In the U.S., service providers Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA have teamed as the ISIS mobile commerce net- work to permit the cellphone to become the credit card for tomor- row. Apple iPhone and Google ‘Droid have already rolled out their apps in limited releases. Within the ISIS app, you
enter which credit card you want to use to pay for items at a credit card terminal. When it’s time to pay, simply touch your cellphone to the terminal and the transaction is complete. No more fumbling for your wallet or purse, no more mag stripes that are unreadable, and no more handing your credit card to the attendant / cashier to process (and maybe copy / clone your number). Monthly Parking Payment,
Invoicing and A/R software. For years, this was available only from the corporate level of your parking operator, which had invested heavily in creating a monthly billing and accounting system (and also a profit center for doing the invoicing and bookkeeping).
Individual 48 Parking Today
www.parkingtoday.com
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