An intelligent architecture for metropolitan area parking control and toll collection

U.S federal and state governments invest millions of dollars for enforcing parking control in the metro city area. Tasks like parking enforcement, towing of illegally parked vehicles and maintenance require many man-hours and resources. The parking control and revenue system in the metro are essentially dependant on devices like coin or token based parking meters, which require the use of exact change and is therefore cumbersome. Also a patrol officer is required to monitor these spaces constantly. This entails the need for a more efficient and redundant system. In this paper, we propose an architecture for automated parking meter and driver assistance system that shall be connected to a centralized traffic control authority responsible for parking enforcement and toll collection. This system would provide a more efficient and redundant way of enforcing parking control and toll collection and also assist drivers in metro area for searching an available parking space. The above-mentioned architecture enables automated parking toll collection.