A smart parking solution for the best beach city in the USA
St. Pete Beach is a Florida seaside city with several white-sand beaches lapped by the warm waters of Gulf of Mexico. In 2021, St. Pete Beach has been ranked as the best beach city in the US by TripAdvisor.
Visitors value the quality and variety of hotels and the different types of tourism: family, young, adventurous, sun and beach… And now they also value the possibility of checking the parking spaces occupancy before going to the beach thanks to the mobile app designed by Conure and based on Libelium’s Smart Parking nodes.
» The challenge we face with IoT technology
Inform visitors in real-time about the availability of parking spaces around a busy beach.
» The end-to-end IoT solution
750 Libelium Smart Parking nodes that send slots availability data in real-time to a web platform and a mobile app.
Behind the change
The City of St. Pete Beach strives to uphold community values that encourage an environment of innovation, resilience, sustainability, and inspiration. As a result, St. Pete Beach’s Strategic Plan (Vision 2030) was yielded. The plan is structured on four categories: economy, internal operations, resilience, community, and transportation.
For this last area, the city council of St. Pete Beach counts on Conure for a very specific project: to know the availability of parking in real-time at one of its more crowded beaches – Pass-a-Grille. The beach is a small but charming beach in the southernmost part of the city, chosen by many to sunbathe, relax in its waters and more importantly watch amazing sunsets. Due to this popularity, oftentimes it is arduous to find parking nearby and the relaxing day at the beach can become a nightmare behind the wheel.
People go to the beach to relax. Nobody wants to arrive at the shore already stressed. To enhance the experience for citizens and tourists, the managers of St. Pete Beach enlisted the help of Conure to provide real-time parking availability at Pass-a-Grille Beach and alleviate congestión, while giving drivers freedom from parking hassles. Conure is dedicated to implementing bespoke IoT solutions. To develop its parking plan, they installed 750 Libelium Smart Parking nodes on four of its most important areas: 9th Avenue, Gulf Way South, Pass-a-Grille Way and Gulf Way North.
“The initiative was fueled by the city’s desire to provide better information to the public regarding parking availability within the city, and as a goal to make the parking experience easier for visitors in the city,” Michelle Gonzales, director of Community Development for the City of St. Pete Beach, said.
The Challenge
People go to the beach to relax. Nobody wants to arrive at the shore already stressed. To enhance the experience for citizens and tourists, the managers of St. Pete Beach enlisted the help of Conure to provide real-time parking availability at Pass-a-Grille Beach and alleviate congestión, while giving drivers freedom from parking hassles. Conure is dedicated to implementing bespoke IoT solutions. To develop its parking plan, they installed 750 Libelium Smart Parking nodes on four of its most important areas: 9th Avenue, Gulf Way South, Pass-a-Grille Way and Gulf Way North.
“The initiative was fueled by the city’s desire to provide better information to the public regarding parking availability within the city, and as a goal to make the parking experience easier for visitors in the city,” Michelle Gonzales, director of Community Development for the City of St. Pete Beach, said.
The Solution: Smart Parking
Smart Parking technology for tourists and managers
The radar technology of the Libelium parking nodes detects if there is a car on top or not, that is, if the space is occupied or free. This information is sent to the Conure cloud which sends it to the mobile app (available for both iPhone and Android) and to the St. Pete Beach website where the information is updated in real-time.
The parking space map paints with a dot all the monitored spaces, whether they are occupied (orange) or free (light blue). Likewise, the places available for people with disabilities are marked in dark blue. The Smart Parking solution reduces stress for visitors when searching for available spaces and enables cities to monitor and manage parking spaces, improve traffic flow and increase city revenue. This information is a very helpful tool for enforcement officers who can go directly to the occupied places to verify that they have paid for the parking and make sure that the places for the disabled are occupied by vehicles authorized to do so.
Beyond the Challenge - The result
“Currently, we are piloting this technology for a year and will see how the technology has been working in the city prior to expanding it to another beach area. If we do find the pilot to be successful, the next area of expansion that will be considered is Upham Beach,” Gonzalez said.
Smart parking space management is one more point for St. Pete Beach to remain to be considered one of the best beaches in the US for many years to come.
This IoT project helps to achieve the following Sustainable Development Goals:
