If your AutoVu™
Free-Flow system is configured to allow shared parking
permits, then the same parking permit can be associated with multiple vehicles. Shared
permits are generally used if the permit holder owns more than one vehicle, or for drivers
who carpool.
Shared permits apply to one vehicle at a time. For example, if all four carpool members
who share a permit decide to drive their own vehicles on a certain day, only the first
vehicle entering the parking zone would be allowed to park using the permit. The other
three vehicles would generate shared permit hits if they enter the parking zone
while the first vehicle is parked.
Using Pay-by-Plate
Sync
Consider the following when configuring shared permits:
- To use shared permits, the permits must come from a
third-party parking permit provider using the Pay-by-Plate
Sync plugin. You can define static
permits for vehicles in Security
Center,
however these permits cannot be shared between vehicles.
- To use this feature, the Pay-by-Plate
Sync permit provider must support
shared permits.
- Vehicles are considered to share a permit if they have the same permit ID. For this
reason, ensure that all permits have a unique permit ID. If two permits share the
same permit ID when this feature is enabled, they can generate shared permit
hits.
How shared permits work
- When a vehicle enters a parking zone, the system starts a new parking session for the vehicle and
validates the parking permit associated with the license plate.
NOTE: If the Sharp camera misreads certain characters of
the vehicle's license plate, the system can still associate the vehicle's
license plate to the parking permit. The system does this using an LPR matcher
technique that only requires five common characters and four contiguous
characters.
- The system compares the permit ID with vehicles that are already in the
parking zone.
- If no other license plates share the same permit ID, the parking session's
paid time stage begins.
- If another license plate does share the same permit ID, then the parking
session goes into violation.
- If the license plate does not have a permit, then the parking session's
convenience time
starts.
- If the system cannot communicate with the Pay-by-Plate
Sync permit provider to validate
the permit, the parking session's convenience time starts. The system
attempts to validate the permit again at the end of the vehicle's parking
session.
