These are challenging times for everyone. Facility owners and managers are struggling to keep their buildings operating safely in a time of pandemic, and it’s not an easy task. As you work to protect your employees and patrons during this crisis, don’t forget your parking facilities.

Like other common areas, parking facilities present a number of challenges when it comes to protecting employees and visitors from the COVID-19. 

For example, there are numerous touch surfaces that may have been used by many other people, and on which the virus can live, potentially for several days. But for most, shutting down parking areas isn’t an option. For many owners, parking is still an important source of revenue. For others, such as hospitals and emergency healthcare centers, it’s an essential service that provides access to the facility for patients, doctors, nurses, and staff. 

As challenging as it may be, there are steps you can take to make your parking areas safer and protect your employees and visitors.

SANITATION

Sanitation is of paramount concern, particularly in common areas. Until this crisis passes, it’s advisable to use hospital grade cleaning supplies recommended by experts. It is important to not only consider those parking in the garage, but to also consider frontline staff that are working tirelessly to keep operations afloat.

During this crisis, adhere to the guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC recommends cleaning hard, non-porous surfaces with a detergent or soap before disinfecting them. For disinfection, most common EPA-registered household disinfectants should be effective as long as you adhere to the manufacturer’s instructions for concentration, application method, and contact time.

For electronics, the CDC recommends following the manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning and disinfecting their products. If no manufacturer guidance is available, alcohol-based wipes and sprays containing at least 70% alcohol should be effective.

There are a number of common touchpoints that require particularly aggressive cleaning. The most obvious are doors and door handles, stairway handles, and elevators and elevator lobbies. In elevators and elevator lobbies, it’s particularly important to pay close attention to call buttons. Frequent cleaning is called for, and if you can obtain extra sanitizing wipes, it makes sense to leave them in common areas so employees and visitors can wipe down any surfaces they touch. Not only does this protect them, but it protects others who will be touching those surfaces after them.

Another area of parking where sanitation is essential, but which could easily be overlooked, is technology. PARCS equipment, pay-on-foot, and on-street parking meters are all active touchpoints.

People are using them all day long to pay for parking, so it’s imperative to frequently clean their surfaces and, when possible, offer sanitary wipes so visitors can clean them off before using them. Also, launch a marketing campaign to encourage your patrons to download the parking app and set up touchless payments.

However, as important as sanitation is, it’s not enough. No matter how much you wipe down your equipment or what solutions you use, it only takes one sick person to contaminate your facilities. And when that happens, your parkers and staff are at risk. That’s why it’s vital to consider other strategies, as well.

TECHNOLOGY

Speaking of parking technology, there are a number of ways in which technology can help protect patrons and promote public health. Facilities that have frictionless technologies in place are at an advantage in this regard.

Frictionless parking uses various technologies—advanced parking access & revenue control (PARCS), license plate recognition (LPR) or automatic vehicle identification (AVI), parking guidance, and sometimes pre-booking—to allow drivers to pre-pay or establish payment credentials and then enter and exit garages without having to stop to pull a ticket upon entering or pay upon exiting. To use frictionless parking, drivers either reserve parking or set up an account with payment credentials that are tied to their license plate number. When the driver arrives at the garage their vehicle is recognized by LPR technology, or they flash a bar code provided by a pre-booking platform, and the entrance gate raises to let them in. When they are ready to leave, the same system works—LPR recognizes them or the bar code is again scanned—and their account is charged. There are now parking options available that don’t require gates, but instead utilize LPN technology for access management. With frictionless parking there’s no need for the driver to touch any equipment.

There are other technologies in common use that can also promote public health. For instance, if you already offer mobile payment, encourage your parkers to use it. It’s much safer right now for them to be handling their own mobile devices to pay than using the shared screens of PARCS equipment, pay-on-foot machines, or meters. Most of us associate mobile payment with municipal on-street parking, but many private parking owners and operators also offer it to improve convenience and make parking more manageable. If your organization offers mobile payment, now is the time to aggressively promote that tactic to increase adoption.

Likewise, parking pre-payment platforms can also promote public health by allowing drivers to reserve and pay for parking in advance. As mentioned earlier, drivers who pre-book don’t have to touch PARCS or payment equipment when they use parking facilities. Both mobile payment and parking pre-booking platforms are easily obtained if you don’t currently offer them, and they typically are available at minimal, if any, cost to owners and parkers.