Collaborative Parking Solution Project

Ethos is applying for the on-demand mobility solution challenge; focusing on parking which is a major issue for many cities. This challenge has several dimensions, including:
Economic - 51% of motorists are turning their backs on city centres because of the difficulties posed by parking (Source Swiftcover & BIS Understanding High Street Performance Report)
Environmental - up to 15% of vehicle emissions come from motorists trying to park their vehicle (Source: TSB); if this was halved, UK CO2 emissions would reduce by 38M tons annually (Source: Ofgem)
Wellbeing - 2.5 million disabled blue badge drivers & the growing numbers of electric vehicle owners are finding that city parking servives do not meet their needs (Source Parkmobility.com and myrenaultzoe.com)
Furthermore, cities are facing reputational damage; 3.4 million Parking Charge Notices are issued annually for extended stays in designated spaces (Source: Swiftcover), whilst generating £565M of parking charge surpluses (Source: RAC). This has led to adverse publicity and is undermining public trust. The current responses are inadequate. Much parking is being outsourced, replicating broken models. New technology is being deployed but is fragmented and proprietary, often with incomplete data that is locked in individual systems or in static forms. The situation is unsustainable, no one wins. The Ethos solution provides a collaborative parking platform based on a common core dataset. Using an open source architecture, it will give free access to high quality real-time information on parking availability and pricing for use by both citizens and business. Additionally, the intent is to encourage an ecosystem of innovative third party applications, using the platform to provide services that aid motorists in their journey.
This collaborative approach will deliver benefits for all stakeholders:
Drivers - value added services that could include amongst others, discount incentives for parking, notification of car parks with space or to pre-booked individual spaces
Cities - an accurate measure of parking demand; helping to achieve optimisation of the parking asset and for parking to become a precision policy tool to help encourage flexible working behaviours
Government - a business and governance model for self-financing open data publication
Retailers / Employers - business intelligence for retailers to monitor sales against visitors or office car park sharing
Entrepreneurs - use of integrated data to develop new smart initiatives such as web or mobile applications
We will set up a Community Interest Company (CIC) , a company designed specifically for those wishing to operate for the benefit of the community, which will own the Collaborative Parking platform. The CIC will be funded from the optimisation of the participating cities’ parking assets. It is anticipated that key stakeholders will own a share in the CIC & excess profits generated from operating the platform will be reinvested for the benefit of the cities’ residents.