City Of Kirkwood Announces Partnership With Smart Parking Tech Company

From the City of Kirkwood:

May 17, 2021

The City of Kirkwood has agreed to a partnership with Fybr, a smart parking technology company, to create a better consumer parking experience in downtown Kirkwood. As part of the partnership, Fybr has installed 275 wireless in-ground parking sensors to provide residents and visitors with live parking occupancy data. The Fybr Parking Sensor is an intelligent edge device that provides accurate, real-time detection for every space, is designed for years of low-maintenance service, and utilizes a state-of-the-art MEMS magnetometer to sense vehicle presence.

Residents and visitors will be able to access this data using Park Kirkwood, a mobile wayfinding app that is available in the Apple App store and Google Play store. This application will provide drivers with real-time space availability—minimizing the need for circling, double-parking and unnecessary congestion. The intent is to increase parking efficiency and provide a simpler, more convenient parking experience.

Fybr’s Smart Parking technology is in use in multiple cities across the country such as San Francisco, Washington D.C, Columbus and Seattle. By installing the parking sensors in 275 spaces downtown at no cost to the city, this will allow Fybr to test their technology in a local environment. A little larger than the size of a hockey puck, the parking sensors collect no information or data from the vehicle owner. When the sensors detect that a vehicle has entered a parking space, that information is sent to a nearby microprocessor that delivers this information to the mobile app.

Chief Administrative Officer Russ Hawes is optimistic about the partnership’s potential. “Kirkwood and Fybr have partnered to address one of our largest challenges, and use data to learn about the parking patterns in our downtown.” It’s that data, Hawes says, that holds the key to successful curbside management in the future. “We’re proud of our downtown area and want it to be as accessible to residents and visitors as possible. What’s working? What isn’t? And most importantly, what are the ways we can make the parking process more efficient and more pleasant in the future.”

Matt Willenbrink, Chief Commercial Officer of Fybr and Kirkwood resident says, “Having a local footprint for inspections, auditing, and adjustments will be critical to improving our system even further. Our system currently has a proven accuracy of over 98%. This partnership will give us the ability to more easily test and make enhancements to our system in order to achieve an accuracy of 99% or greater.”

The mobile app, Park Kirkwood, is available in the Apple App store and Google Play store.

This press release was produced by the City of Kirkwood .The views expressed here are the author’s own.