A Parking management system: a case study of Garden City Complex

Abstract

Parking in the urban areas has become increasingly part and parcel of successful business, more and more shoppers get attracted to organized shopping complexes where ample, secure and effectively managed parking is provided. This project has focused on developing a software that will effectively manage the parking facilities not only at Garden city but also manage parking at other shopping complexes in order to optimize the use of limited parking spaces and increase customer satisfaction. To achieve this objective, a qualitative and quantitative research design was used whereby interviews and observation guides were used as the research instruments in data collection. The system in place is manual and is biased towards the provision of security to parked motor-vehicles unlike the effective management of the parking facility in place. It was also established that some of the motorists prefer to pay in advance for use of the parking facility, however others preferred to pay on-spot. The system will be used to capture, process and retrieve data to authorized users. The researcher managed to establish that the developed system would be instrumental in effective management of the parking facility. The system will have the capacity to assign parking bays to incoming vehicles, compute the amount due from the vehicle and also capture the payments made for sticker sales and on-spot payments for utilization of parking bays. The system will cater for the security function offered by the manual system in place.