What is the Role of a Parking Enforcement Officer?3 min read
How many times have you considered canceling an outing because you were dreading the hassle of parking at a crowded place? The biggest culprit behind the unavailability of parking spaces is the increase in the violation of parking rules and regulations. This is where the role of a parking enforcement officer comes into the picture.
What Do Parking Enforcement Officers Do?
You must have come across parking enforcement officers or attendants in parking lots or while parking on the street. They ensure drivers abide by the local parking laws and hand out parking tickets and citations to the violators. In other words, they make sure that you park in the right spot!
As members of the traffic department, parking enforcement officers are licensed to impose fines and issue parking tickets on drivers. But that’s not all. They can also order a car to be towed away if the motorist doesn’t follow the parking regulations.
Furthermore, parking attendants notify the traffic department about the number of tickets issued and maintain accurate records. In the past few years, some countries have expanded the role of parking enforcement officers to include basic policing and traffic control.
Why Are Parking Enforcement Officers Needed?
Here’s a fact – by 2035, there will be 2 billion cars on the road worldwide. With this staggering growth of vehicles on the road combined with limited parking availability, parking law enforcement is a must. It is safe to say that without parking enforcement officers, streets will be filled with badly parked cars and immobilizing traffic congestion.
Currently, the United States is going through an epidemic of bad parking, and a lack of enforcement can only lead to more damage.
Parking Enforcement in the Future
Smart cities with intelligent parking systems are coming into being across many countries, including the US. This is an indicator that parking as we know it will be facing a shift soon, with automation and smart parking being integrated into everyday life.
Once we look at automated public parking, we’re looking at smart parking reinforcement. Parking fines will be levied automatically, and parking disputes might get resolved by AI-enabled smart parking systems. Chances are that human intervention will not be necessary at all, and the duties of a parking attendant might be limited.
And if we look even further into the future, the arrival of self-driving cars can further limit the role of parking enforcement officers. After all, it will be pointless to interact with a driverless and AI-enabled vehicle. But since human judgment is critical in administering fines, we can say that parking reinforcement officers are still much-needed on the roads.
In a Nutshell
Due to the pandemic, more people have turned towards private vehicles, lowering the use of public transport. This is not helping the parking situation in most cities in the US. The role of a parking enforcement officer is crucial now more than ever to ensure the smooth functioning of traffic.
To tackle the parking woes staring at us, Get My Parking is building an AI-enabled smart parking solution to help reinforcement officers curb violations effectively. GMP also has a suite of smart solutions designed to help governments control and organize parking in their cities – click here to know more!
