Recipe for a New Business Model
The above scheme may be complex and expensive but a baseline needs to be established right now for further study in future. For such a baseline, vendor dependent configuration model — one on-street and one off-street (surface lot) – is analyzed to compare with a perceived RWPP configuration model. In old models, vendor-dependent and historical cost data are readily available. Incremental technologies for sophistication of the existing configurations are also known. For RWPP, some assumptions will be made to overcome the limitations and take full advantage of the network device connectivity to provide the desired customer service anywhere, anyway and anytime. Figure 1 shows a connected view of RWPP configuration to achieve the objective.
On-Street Financial Model
The on-street model needs land developments and meters (single, multi-space, pay & display), which will need capital and debt coverage. Labor is required to maintain the system, enforce violations and collect payments even though meters may have capabilities for mobile or credit card payment. Normalized yearly cost for a 1000 spaces configuration and operation is about $800,000. With 20% profitability, your expected yearly revenues must be over $960,000 or $960 per space per year. With this cost base, a revenue generating model can be developed with different parameters for tradeoff analysis.
The above configuration has inherent limitations of optimum performance due to rigidity of the configuration, expensive cash collection and enforcement process. In addition, it does not serve the modern need of Generation Y.
Urban Surface Lot Financial Model
The surface model has been configured with 600 spaces within a limit of one traditional Parking Access Revenue Control System (PARCS). You need attendants to collect the money unless it is fully automated. Even with automation, you will need labor to avoid malfunction of the system or prevent overstay. The normalized yearly cost for 600 spaces’ configuration and operation may be $600,000 (Reference 2). With 20% profitability, your expected yearly revenues stand at $720,000 or $1,200 per space per year. A revenue model with different parameters may be formulated for the revenue and tradeoff analysis. As in on-street financial model, the configuration has inherent limitations of optimum performance due to vendor specific technology and leapfrog of a cost jump when the system runs out of its initial capacity simply by few spaces.
New Business Model Premise
Can we do better than the above with the RWPP model? What are the grounds to do better? Should one application be used to serve both? Are there cost benefits? Again, Figure 1 shows a connected view of RWPP to achieve the future objective when everybody becomes familiar with different technologies and are in sync with the integrated transportation systems. Three assumptions are made to configure this initial RWPP model:
- 1000 on-street and 600 off-street spaces of the above existing model are Combined.
- 1600 traditional spaces could accommodate more than 2720 autonomous vehicles (no space requirement of door opening, no pedestrian space to walk, no stair way or elevator and smaller lane for driveway).
- Federal tax discounts have been added while adding PV cells for renewable energy sources