The new generation of on-street parking meter system was rolled out officially in January 2021. Serving as a technical advisor to the Transport Department for the project, the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) actively leveraged its role as a facilitator of innovation and technology development to accomplish the novel endeavour. The EMSD has closely followed up on various aspects of the development work, such as market research, technical support, project co-ordination and monitoring, providing more convenient parking facilities for motorists and developing the blueprint of “Smart Mobility” for Hong Kong in collaboration with the client.
The installation of new smart parking meters was one of the key initiatives in achieving “Smart Mobility”. Over the years, the EMSD team, together with the clients, conducted on-site visits to the Mainland of China, the United States as well as Singapore, and explored various solutions. We provided technical advice to the clients throughout the project stage, from formulation of the technical requirements, tendering, design to installation and commissioning. In regard of the project design and work processes, the EMSD took into consideration the clients’ long-term benefits. For instance, co-operation in the mode of “management, operation and maintenance contract” was recommended to the client to ensure that the successful tenderer would have incentive to use more durable technologies and components, and thereby reducing the frequency and cost of maintenance in the long run.
The new parking meters accept payment of parking fees by multiple means, including Octopus, contactless credit cards, Faster Payment System (FPS) and QR code. The system also supports the newly developed mobile app HKeMeter, which allows motorists to pay parking fees on-site and extend their parking time by remote payment. Against this background, the EMSD made meticulous efforts in co-ordinating technical exchanges between the parking meter system vendor and payment service providers during the development process. As each payment option has its own technical, security and testing requirements, the project team kept a close eye on the progress of each requirement being met and flexibly arranged preliminary testing for the payment options that were ready for operation, so as to identify and resolve technical problems as early as possible.
The new meters are also equipped with occupancy sensors making use of the technology of millimeter wave radar to detect whether parking spaces are occupied. The project team set up various parking scenarios, including flat roads, slopes, private car parking spaces, goods vehicle parking spaces and spaces occupied by other objects. Vehicles of different sizes, colours and models were also used to simulate realistic situations in more than 1000 on-site parking tests performed during daytime and night-time. With the development of the sophisticated sensors, real-time parking space information could be disseminated to motorists through HKeMeter and DATA.GOV.HK to assist them in finding vacant parking spaces.
In striking a balance between bringing convenience in paying parking fees and preventing prolonged occupation of parking spaces, the project team took into consideration the actual usage of the smart parking meters when designing the remote payment function of HKeMeter, and decided to use a QR code to bundle the motorist’s mobile app and the parking meter within a specified time period during which remote payment will only be accepted for a maximum of two consecutive sessions of the “longest parking period”.
The new parking meters made their debut at Yiu Sing Street in Central, Man Chat Road in Tuen Mun and Clear Water Bay in Sai Kung on 20 January 2021.