Every parking ticket printed has an environmental footprint. They need raw materials, energy for processing, and water for production. Discarded parking tickets contribute to land-based litter and pollution, especially if they’re not recycled properly, accumulating in urban areas, waterways and natural habitats. Now, consider how many parking tickets are issued annually, the cost of recycling them, capex costs, and the limitations introduced by erratic power infrastructure and machine breakdowns.
Outdated ticketing systems are holding precincts back from achieving their sustainability goals, and consumers from being able to play their part in keeping the country green. Traditional parking systems introduce a range of avoidable inefficiencies. They waste paper, eat power and often break down which frustrates users and costs money and materials to repair. Switching to digital will help precincts and landlords reach their sustainability targets a lot faster while also cutting costs.
It will also cut back on having to rely on mechanical hardware which needs backup generators during loadshedding and needs regular maintenance. How many times have you gone to pay for parking only to see an Out of Order sign stuck across the screen? People don’t want to wander across parking lots and malls to make a grudge payment, they need it to be simple. Parking operators want it to generate value, not cause problems. Digital solutions, like Parket, generate about the same power as a lightbulb and don’t need constant management and repair – a stark contrast to the neediness of the typical payment machine that’s affected by power outages and downtime. Digital parking minimises reliance on diesel backup or repeated on-site technician visits for machines that endure significant wear and tear thanks to patchy infrastructure and high usage.
The capital expenditure for parking ticketing systems in South Africa is also a factor. It varies significantly based on the technology. Traditional pay-and-display machines cost around R40,000–R80,000 per unit, while more advanced systems like pay-on-exit or license plate recognition range from R120,000 up to R400,000+ per lane, reflecting higher automation and integration needs, and combined these are expensive for landlords to purchase and install.
Then there’s the cost of each parking ticket. Traditional systems cost around 23 cents per ticket, a figure that adds up quickly in high traffic retail or business environments. While there are no specific statistics around the exact number of parking tickets issued by machines in South Africa, there are numbers around parking bays and transactions per bay. With tens of thousands of parking bays in major cities still using machines, it’s reasonable to estimate that millions of machine-issued parking tickets are being issued from sites that have yet to go digital. Eliminating these tickets reduces overheads and waste streams which count against green performance.
Recycling these tickets is challenging, especially if they contain magnetic strips or are coated with thermal paper. These materials make the tickets incompatible with standard paper recycling streams as the magnetic and thermal elements are considered contaminants. As a result, the tickets end up in landfill. Which is a problem in a country which has only 10% of its waste recycled. In one location alone, Parket’s digital platform replaced more than 150,000 paper tickets a month which translates to substantial savings in paper, energy and waste.
And it was just one site.
Digital introduces simpler access with reduced capex, improved sustainability and, as an added benefit, it also gives customers more choice. Book in advance? No problem. Manage tickets without cash? Done. Access tickets and payments from anywhere? Also done. It simplifies ticketing while improving customer experiences and building loyalty, which are invaluable.
Bye-bye circling the block
Globally, up to 30% of urban traffic is caused by drivers looking for parking. This contributes to congestion and emissions while eating into time. When you hit the same traffic light for the third time, you start losing patience and are usually late for your appointment. Digital addresses this with real-time data and pre-booking capabilities which allow you to reserve a bay and drive straight in. This cuts down on idling and emissions (and irritation) while improving flow through the entrances. And all of these are measurable contributions towards a precinct’s environmental performance.
This is very useful for mixed-use and precinct developments where office workers, residents and retail customers are all using the same infrastructure at different times. Parking that can be booked and managed changes from a rigid, underused asset to a dynamic one that can evolve to meet occupancy requirements.
It’s a sharp move when you consider how parking is often one of the most expensive parts of a building’s infrastructure. The ramps, the concrete, the design – these are a significant cost and footprint so if you can optimise what you have then you’re actively contributing to greener cities.
Sustainability doesn’t have to start with sweeping architectural redesigns, often it begins with smaller, high-impact decisions as simple as rethinking how people enter and exit a building. For landlords, developers and asset managers, navigating growing environmental expectations, digital parking is a step in the right direction. The clean technology means less waste and greener precincts and building parking solutions for the world that everyone wants to live in.