Parking and Security Case Study: Forks North Portage – Winnipeg, Manitoba

About The Forks North Portage

North Portage Development Corporation (NPDC) was incorporated on December 13, 1983, under the laws of Manitoba as a community development corporation and commenced operations on that date. The Corporation is owned equally by the following shareholders: the Federal Government of Canada, the Province of Manitoba, and the City of Winnipeg. The corporation’s objective is to provide a mechanism for implementing the redevelopment of the North Portage area.

The Forks Renewal Corporation (FRC) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NPDC. FRC was incorporated on July 24, 1987, under the laws of Manitoba, and commenced operations on July 29, 1987. Focused on the redevelopment of the former CN East Yards area.

The operations of the two Corporations were merged in 1994 to form The Forks North Portage Partnership.

Client Overview

Forks North Portage (FNP) is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. FNP manages over 20 lots throughout the city, including in the shopping district called “The Forks.”

The Forks North Portage Partnership, a key stakeholder in downtown development, is responsible for the ownership, management, and continuing renewal of The Forks and North Portage sites.

The partnership’s business provides many reasons for people ‘to live, work, and play downtown.’ As more people live, work, or play downtown, more services and entertainment will be developed to serve them. Vitality at The Forks and North Portage results from a diverse mix of facilities and activities that reinforce one another, bringing people into the downtown.

Parking & Security Challenges

• moving to a paid model @ The Forks (KEY)
• improving customer service (KEY)
• merging parking operations (KEY)
• ensure a high quality of service
• track parking allocations
• issue and track violations

Technology Solutions

The Forks North Portage (FNP) looked to the OperationsCommander (OPS-COM) parking and security platform to help integrate several disconnected parking technologies. The key benefit is access to a system that supports customization and can grow to integrate a multitude of different parking applications and technologies. OPS-COM supplies a scalable and customizable solution to fulfill these requirements.

OPS-COM parking and security platform

• brings together or replaces legacy parking applications
• fully customizable to support client processes
• additional revenue comes from parking enforcement
• enhances inner-office communication
• reporting that interlinks the overlapping areas of parking and enforcement

ParkAdmin for parking management

• generate revenue from previous “free” parking based on time limits
• allows users to self-manage parking and payments
• used to audit parking lot usage

Text2Park.Me

• SMS (phone) parking payments for temporary parking
• parking registration from the comfort of your car

ViolationAdmin for parking enforcement

• allows users to pay and dispute violations online
• remote data access using Android handhelds
• support remote sharing of virtual chalk information
• virtual chalking and violations with context imagery

PL8-RDR – license plate recognition

• monitoring of vehicles for parking validation
• enforcement of vehicles with automatic virtual chalking
• automatic tracking and reporting of vehicles of interest

FinanceAdmin financial reporting and billing

• invoice creation to group client permits
• payments pushed directly to the bank
• receivables reporting
• subscription model for payments

3rd party integrations

• Luke II – parking meters
• Tattile – license plate recognition cameras
• Moneris – online portal payments

Parking and Security Project Results

The OPS-COM parking and security platform fulfills FNP’s desire to swap out old legacy systems and move to a paid model at The Forks shopping area. The cloud-based system ensures that data is available to all staff when required. Patrols in the field can virtual chalk vehicles to uphold time limits by simply driving past vehicles parked near The Forks. The same PL8-RDR technology is used to validate parkers at numerous lots scattered throughout the city. Self-managed profiles allow users to dispute and pay for violations from any computer, thus improving client service.

Resulting Benefits

• Bring together or replace old legacy parking systems through one simple cloud-based interface.
• Simplify the creation of a pay model around previously ‘free’ parking
• Allow staff to interact with data and communication tools as a single solution

The Forks North Portage has contributed to the evolution of the OperationsCommander parking and security platform by sharing its business process. The software has been customized through discussions and one-on-one meetings to best meet FNP’s business processes. One example is the FinanceAdmin module, which evolved from discussions on how FNP managed clients and invoices and how they wanted to push that functionality to designated client representatives.