Performance Parking Frequently Asked Questions

Arlington's Performance Parking Pilot project is testing a combination of technology and management tools to improve the customer experience with metered parking spaces on the curb – improving actual access to metered parking spaces, improving perceptions of availability and knowledge of parking options, and decreasing the potential for negative impacts associated with searching for parking (cruising, double parking, going somewhere else to do business, etc.). The parking solution the County is testing will create an occupancy detection system to provide better parking availability information and pricing tools to influence demand for metered curbspace. 

The goals established for the project include:

• On-street parking is easier to find on block faces with high parking demand than it is today.
• More people choose to park on block faces where demand is low today.
• Fewer instances of double parking occur, freeing up travel lanes and reducing conflicts.
• Drivers spend less time looking for on-street parking.
• Drivers perceive that they spend less time looking for on-street parking.
• Members of the public perceive that they have better on-street parking information.
• Vehicle miles travelled resulting from on-street parking search or “cruising” are reduced in the areas where the pilot system is installed.
• Mobile emissions from vehicles are reduced in the areas with the system as a result of reduced vehicle miles travelled.
• Ensuring throughout this process, that community engagement is equitable and inclusive.

Staff asked the community for its input on ordering these goals by priority during the initial community outreach period in spring-summer 2023. You can see the results here.

A pilot project is a limited-duration test of a system, service, or solution. A pilot project is not necessarily going to be permanent . It includes analysis of before, during, and after data to determine how well the solution works. If it works well, the project may become permanent.

The project is expected to include about 4,500 metered parking spaces. The spaces are in two busy areas: the Rosslyn-Ballston and the Richmond Highway/Pentagon City/Crystal City Metrorail corridors. Most of the spaces will be on-street parking but the Courthouse Plaza parking lot is also included. View a map of the pilot project corridors.

The project is a collaborative effort led by the Department of Environmental Services (DES). It is being supported by the Police Department (APD), Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), Department of Technology Services (DTS), Arlington Economic Development (AED), as well as the County Manager’s Office.

The pilot project uses in-ground sensors to provide real-time occupancy information for each of the parking spaces included in the project area. The sensors can detect the presence or absence of a vehicle and allow the system to calculate duration of stay. The project also relies on small wireless “gateways” that use low-power LoRaWAN radio transmission to receive sensor data and push it to the cloud.

No. This pilot project does not capture or store private, personal data. The sensors only capture the presence or absence of a vehicle in a parking space.

Price changes may occur no more than quarterly (every three months). 

Yes, the rate structure may vary geographically. High demand areas will most likely see an increase in price and low demand areas will likely stay the same or decrease.

Parkers will be able to access price and availability information through computer and mobile friendly public viewers which will be linked from the Arlington County project page, from third-party app developers who use the API to make these data available on their interfaces, and/or by consulting the meter display or the ParkMobile interface.

No, the pilot project does not use camera technology directly. However, a separate VDOT initiative, designed to evaluate the pilot’s influence on driver behavior such as double parking, initially explored leveraging existing County CCTV infrastructure. Limitations in these County systems necessitate their deployment of specialized cameras confined to 10 “case study” blocks. Functioning similarly to temporary traffic or parking counters, these cameras capture snapshots during metered parking hours without video, license plate recognition, or facial identification capabilities.

The pilot project will not immediately impact the amount that customers pay to park. Parking rate changes will be considered by the County once the County Board approves the process and there is detailed information about occupancy and parking behavior available. Prices at the busiest meters may go up, while prices at the least busy meters may go down. No rate changes resulting from this project will be implemented until calendar year 2024.

No. Current parking payment methods will not change. Customers will be able to continue use the methods currently available to pay to park.

No, this pilot project only includes public metered parking spaces in the two project areas. 

We have partnered with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), which is funding and executing a third-party assessment, or system optimization, of the project. They are designing their work with consideration of the goals of the project and consistent with the grant application. Their data sources are anticipated to include system data, citation data (anonymized; numbers of citations and locations), public video feeds from some existing traffic cameras to capture double parking, voluntary driver surveys, and possibly others.

The data will be used by County staff to analyze number of parking sessions, turnover, average dwell time, and occupancy percentage and to review/implement price changes. The data system will provide 3rd party/public access to an Application Programming Interface (API), and the public will have access to an interactive map visualizing parking occupancy data through the project webpage.

The system will provide 3^rd party access to an API (early 2024) that conforms to the Curb Data Specification (CDS). The open standard was created by the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF), an open-source foundation that creates a governance structure around open-source mobility tools. Once the third parties have access to the data, they can transform it into valuable information about parking pricing and availability for the community and share it as widely as they can via their platforms.

The project does not directly include addressing non-metered curbside use changes. However, as the project progresses and we have more information about the difference between duration of stay and the time limits currently on the curb, the data may be leveraged to inform changes to curbside management.

Automatic enforcement features are not part of the project. The project anticipates providing police with summarized information about portions of the project area that show low payment “compliance” by comparing the project’s occupancy data with the County’s payment transaction data. This information would allow parking enforcement to potentially better allocate limited resources.

The County maintains an “all may park, all must pay” guideline; however, accessible spaces will be analyzed separately from other parking spaces. Some specific accessible locations may warrant a price change, but since many accessible spaces show lower occupancy today than other parking uses, it is likely they would see a price decrease or remain unchanged. 

Main installation began in spring 2023 and will be completed by October 2023. Maintenance installations on individual block faces will take place throughout the project period.

The pilot project will last approximately 3 years.

Sections of parking along the curb are closed for less than a day to install or maintain the sensors. The intent is to minimize disturbances from the project by closing only one side of parking on a block at a time. Travel lanes will not be closed for this work.

Only metered parking spaces are included in the pilot project. However, it is possible that the same technology approach could be used to help us understand and manage other curb uses in the future.

The installation schedule will take all known planned paving including the 2023 County paving schedule into account. Streets that are affected by paving will have sensors installed after the paving for that area has completed. In the future, sensors will need to be removed prior to paving and replaced after paving takes place. Great care will be taken to avoid replacing sensors for paving and some amount of replacement has been accounted for in the existing budget for the project.

All drivers will have better information about open parking spaces and their rates. While rates in high demand areas may increase, rates in lower-demand areas will stay the same or could even decrease, and this will provide the driver with different parking options to choose from based on the personal priority of convenience, time requirement, and/or financial considerations.

Pricing changes are implemented to change parking behavior on metered streets. Parkers will be able to identify open metered parking spaces and their prices more easily. Drivers who have chosen to find unmanaged parking in the past are unlikely to be impacted by this project. However, drivers cruising for parking spaces may now have an easier time identifying open metered spaces and are less likely to cruise through an unmetered neighborhood.

In winter-spring 2023, staff started the first phase of engagement with the community, focused on presentations to stakeholder groups including commissions, BIDs, and other business stakeholders. A demonstration site was installed at the Courthouse Plaza surface parking lot to support community awareness. The project team conducted pop-ups in the corridors to share information about the project, and a feedback form was available through July 2023. The purpose of this initial phase of outreach and engagement was to get key stakeholders and the public familiar with project, what it can do, what it cannot/will not do, the overall schedule, and to get insight into preferred priorities among the project goals. A summary of the initial phase of engagement is provided on the project website. The project team will continue to tailor engagement efforts to the needs of specific phases of the project and based on success reaching a wide variety of audiences.

The community engagement process and your input are important in several different ways for this project:

• To ensure that folks are aware of and have a generally good understanding of what the project does or does not intend to do;
• To help the project team prioritize the project’s goals when making decisions;
• To make the project team aware of potential issues which may be encountered with project implementation so they can be mitigated before they arise; and
• To help us ask better questions with the project, and get a more powerful, positive outcome from it.

This pilot project is testing one way that we can deliver on the County Board's adopted policy guidance for parking in the Master Transportation Plan. The input requested from the public will help to ensure that needs of the community are incorporated into the implementation of the pilot project and allow for improvements as it evolves and moves forward over its 3-year term.

During the community engagement process, we ask a few optional demographic questions to help us understand who we are hearing from and who is learning about this project. This will help us refine our engagement approach to reach a representative group of Arlingtonians.

Project contacts can be found on the right side of this web page.

The pilot project uses in-ground sensors to provide real-time occupancy information for each of the parking spaces included in the project area. The sensors can detect the presence or absence of a vehicle and allow the system to calculate duration of stay. The project also relies on small wireless “gateways” that use low-power radio transmission to receive sensor data and push it to the cloud.

To learn more about the technology used for this project, please see below:

The sensors are used to detect the presence of a vehicle and do not collect information about the vehicle such as make, model, or license plate. The sensors are embedded in the pavement and do not have image-sensing technology (i.e., no cameras).

The sensors have a magnetometer that detects changes in the surrounding magnetic field, and it does not emit magnetic fields. This is used to detect the change in magnetic field causes by a car parking over top of it. The metal in the vehicle naturally disturbs the magnetic field.

The sensors have a radar that transmits low-power (60GHz) radio waves directly above the sensor for short periods of time and relatively infrequently. A receiver is used to detect the reflection of waves off a vehicle parked directly above the sensor. The attenuation of 60GHz radio through air is very high due to oxygen molecules being very efficient at absorbing RF energy at this frequency. Practically speaking, the RF energy from the radar transmitter is undetectable beyond three feet from the sensor.

The sensors have a low-power LoRaWAN radio used to communicate the occupancy data wirelessly to the Internet using the 915MHz industrial, scientific, medical (ISM) band. The sensors utilize Bluetooth for communication with the eleven-x installation and maintenance mobile application. Both radios are certified by the FCC to ensure it meets the strict regulations of operating the radio including RF power level limits.

The communication network comprises LoRaWAN gateways which will be installed primarily on traffic lights, but occasionally other pieces of infrastructure throughout the County to provide adequate coverage. The LoRaWAN radios are also certified by the FCC to operate in the 915MHz ISM band.

All wireless technologies in the project meet or exceed FCC standards. For more information, see here: https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/2AOX5PRK001001.

No. The Bluetooth radio is only used to communicate with the eleven-x mobile phone app during installation and during in-field maintenance. The Bluetooth radio is not used to sniff Bluetooth MAC addresses of other devices. The sensors are battery-operated and designed to last 10 years for the vehicle detection use case. Constantly scanning for surrounding devices and reporting them to the network would significantly reduce the battery life.

No. This pilot project technology system does not connect to any county system. Eleven-x, the vendor that designed and is implementing the technology, has taken great care to protect the system itself from cyberattacks. Some of the security features are:

• The wireless communication technology uses LoRaWAN which has built-in security features like sensor authentication and 128-bit data encryption.
• Each sensor has a unique identifier like a MAC address.
• Each sensor has a secret key used for encryption.
• There is a patent-pending method of securing the Bluetooth communication with the sensor.
• The sensor has a secure BootROM (Read Only Memory) preventing someone from reprogramming a sensor with malicious firmware.
• Gateways are secured using industry-standard practices.
• Industry-standard security practices are used to secure the cloud access points.

The data storage and analytics processing are hosted in the cloud at facilities residing within the United States to reduce the opportunity of foreign interception. All Internet traffic is protected by state-of-the-art security protocols. 

The vehicle detection accuracy is above 99% in all weather conditions. 

The sensors used in this project are completely beneath the surface of the asphalt and are impervious to snow removal equipment. 

The sensors are beneath the surface of the pavement and the only indication that they are there is a black circle on the pavement. The gateways are smaller than a shoebox and will hardly be noticeable when installed up high on street infrastructure. Essentially, the entire system will be invisible unless you look for it.