OCEAN CITY – Positive outcomes, issues and concerns relating to the Inlet parking lot’s new pay-by-plate system were presented to a resort committee this week.
On Tuesday, City Engineer Terry McGean presented the Ocean City Transportation Committee with an evaluation of the resort’s new Parkeon payment system at the Inlet.
Prior to the start of the summer season, the Inlet parking lot’s traditional gated system was replaced with a new pay-by-plate system, in which drivers entering the lot can use any one of the many kiosks to enter their license plate information and to pay for the amount of time they expect to use. The new payment system also employs license plate reader technology at the Inlet’s entrance and exit that records arrival and departure times.
As the summer season comes to a close, resort officials in Ocean City this week received a preliminary review of how the new Parkeon payment system fared throughout peak months at the Inlet parking lot.
McGean said the implementation of the new system resulted in many positive outcomes, including improvements to the maintenance and management of the system and its machines.
“Before, if one booth went down it was cutting our capacity by 25 percent,” he said. “Now if a machine goes down, we still have 16 others that are working.”
McGean said the availability of kiosks also improved the flow of traffic. Except for the July 4 holiday, during which a gridlock left motorists backed up at the Inlet for hours, he noted there were no complaints of traffic back-ups when exiting the parking lot.
However, McGean said staff did identify a handful of issues relating to the operation and enforcement of the Parkeon system.
Aside from the vast majority of complaints pertaining to the overall use of the machines at the Inlet, McGean told the committee users also identified long lines at certain kiosks in the parking lot.
“When I set the locations for these (kiosks) out, my thought was to disperse them throughout the lot, and I felt that the highest usage machines would be the ones closest to the Boardwalk on that edge or the ones closest to the beach on that side,” he said. “That’s not what’s going on. By almost a factor of four, the highest use machines are the four machines in the middle of the lot.”
McGean said the town would solve the issue by relocating underused kiosks near the tram station to the highest traffic areas and examining the need for more machines at those locations.
“I think the philosophy would be instead of single machines all over the lot, what we need to do is have banks of machines and concentrate them,” he said.
McGean said Parkeon users also complained about the kiosk’s “max” button, which will be addressed with updated software, and the $25 processing charge on invoices sent to drivers who owed less than $1 for parking at the Inlet lot.
“I looked at all the invoices that were being sent out and said ‘if we were to delete or waive any invoice for less than a dollar what would that financially come out to for us?’” he said. “Through the end of July, that would have been $900 in lost revenue. So effective August 1, we are not sending an invoice out for less than $26.”
While he pointed out that complaints would be resolved or addressed by the end of the season, McGean told the committee the preliminary evaluation of the Parkeon system also revealed more complex concerns, including the system’s impact on parking revenue, length of stay and invoice collection.
“We really want to look hard at this after the season,” he said.
McGean said parking revenue on the streets and in the Inlet lot was down from the year prior.
“The number of vehicles at the Inlet lot are lower than what they were in 2017,” he said. “Is that a factor of weather or is something else going on down there? At this point, we know we have a concern, but are not sure what is causing it.”
McGean also questioned if the new system caused visitors to cut their stay short at the Inlet lot.
“The preliminary data looked at revenue per transaction, which is indication for how long people are staying or planning to stay,” he said. “Right now, it appears those numbers are within 2.5 percent of 2017.”
However, McGean said he wouldn’t have concrete data until all transactions and invoices were accounted for at the end of the season. So far, nearly 50 percent of invoices sent out in June had been paid by the end of July.
“In 2017, all you were counting was what was coming through the booths,” he said. “In 2018, we need to look at the kiosks, we need to look at the app and we need to look at the invoices.”
Mayor Rick Meehan, chair of the committee, said the town would have a better understanding of how the new system has impacted parking revenue and visits to the Inlet once the season concludes.
“Revenue may be down a little bit, which we don’t like to see, but our costs and our ongoing costs should be down considerably,” he said. “When you look at net numbers, I think we are going to see that they are going to improve.”
