The Future of the $100 Billion Parking Industry

From self-driving vehicles to the rate of urbanization to the buzz of the car-sharing economy, it’s easy to surmise the death of parking. Yes, vehicle ownership is down and, yes, as The New York Times reported, the millennial generation values technology over cars. But the death of parking? Not quite.

According to a recent analysis by Frost & Sullivan, the $100 billion worldwide parking industry is expected to attract institutional and strategic investments to the tune of $200 million to $250 million over the next three to five years, mostly to spur innovation and smarter parking.  A big reason for this infusion of capital is to remedy the inefficiencies in the ways that we park, per recent findings.

So why has the parking industry

taken so long to innovate?

Until recently, parking and innovation have mixed like water and oil. This is largely due to the slow-changing nature of the two-headed parking industry, which comprises both on-street and off-street parking.

On-street parking (i.e., parking meters), which represents about one-third of all parking-related revenue in the U.S., is typically controlled by cities and municipalities (see Figure 1). These folks are not the fastest moving when it comes to initiating technical change, and while there has been progress within the realm of mobile payments at meters, truly scalable, innovative parking availability projects that help drivers find spots when they need them are few and far between.

Off-street parking (i.e., garages and surface lots), which represents about two-thirds of all parking-related revenue in the U.S., is largely owned by private enterprise and therefore, theoretically, should be faster moving when it comes to innovation. But even this segment of parking has been slow to change.