Stockland Baulkham Hills goes live with Smart Parking technology

As a local neighbourhood shopping centre with over 80 stores and amenities, Stockland Baulkham Hills has on average 68,000 visitors a week with 6,000 of those using the car park facilities each day. As the first point of contact with the shopping centre, the challenge of balancing the needs of those visiting and working at Stockland Baulkham Hills has created a need to deliver innovative solutions in managing customer parking needs.

Stockland Baulkham Hills has 831 car parking spaces, with over 500 of these undercover to ensure shopping is easy and convenient for customers.

The Centre Management team, looking to manage demands and, turned to Smart Parking to improve the customer experience of parking at Stockland Baulkham Hills deploying SmartGuide in September – a solution that detects the occupancy status of every parking space within the centre’s car park.

The SmartGuide deployment at Stockland Baulkham Hills has seen the installation of 826 vehicle detection sensors inserted in each individual bay – both undercover and surface level. Each sensor is linked to an overhead indicator, which lights green or red, depending on whether that particular space is occupied, with additional blue lights indicating mobility bays and magenta lights highlighting vehicles in contravention. This is complemented by 50 variable message signs, which display the number of available bays alongside the number of free mobility bays down every aisle, at every driver decision point.

Centre Manager, Amanda Whittle said: “Stockland Baulkham Hills is a convenience based shopping centre with the majority of customers spending less than 3 hours at the centre. The installation of SmartGuide has improved the centre carpark making it an even more convenient destination for the community. With less time spent searching for a parking space, visitors have more time for everything else."

“The new system allows for quick and easy identification of available parking bays, which in turn has reduced customer’s time to wait for a space. This has also assisted in the flow of traffic to enter the carpark, reducing traffic on the surrounding roads. The new Smart Parking system also compliments the Centre’s recent introduction of new LED eco efficient lighting and the installation of two electric vehicle charging bays.

The system has been online just a few weeks and customer feedback so far has been very positive.  Customers have commented on the brighter car park, new colour scheme and are very satisfied with the improvements to the ease of finding an available car parking space.

The installation of SmartGuide has also had a positive impact on driver perceptions of the centre as a whole – an additional bonus for Stockland Baulkham Hills.

Intelligent data

Occupancy data collected through the sensors is relayed in real-time to SmartRep, Smart Parking’s car parking management software tool. Accurate vehicle-by-vehicle, minute-by-minute data on actual usage of the car park means that Stockland are now able to understand the car park usage patterns as well as enforcement efficiency allowing them to make informed decisions on parking policies. Retailer revenues are also maximised through optimum efficiency.

Read the full case study here

About Smart Parking

Formed in 1993, Smart Parking is now one of the largest and fastest-growing bay sensor technology companies in the world. Smart Parking specialises in some of the most technically innovative real-world solutions available within the market and continually leads the way in the development and application of these technologies, under the 'Smart' systems brand. They develop industry-leading technology and provide their clients with the very best parking management solutions.