Smart Parking Solution for Hospitals
Hospital parking has become a broader public issue, with extensive discussion about investment, construction and related matters. In practice,
hospital parking raises three major questions: how to address the shortage of parking spaces, how to determine the number of spaces and corresponding
investment required through a scientific assessment, and where to build a car park and what type it should be.
Current-State Analysis
According to relevant data analysis, hospitals commonly face the following problems.
Inappropriate selection of parking-management equipment: Hospital car parks handle very high volumes of traffic every day.
The suitability and quality of the parking-management system play a decisive role. If the equipment is unsuitable,repeated problems at the entrances
and exits can cause extensive, prolonged congestion and numerous complaints. Appropriate equipment can save the hospital considerable expense.
Insufficient parking spaces: Many hospitals were built years ago, and private-vehicle ownership has grown faster than the original parking plan. Heavy traffic,
too few spaces and disorderly parking are common and create significant safety risks for medical staff and patients.
Peak-hour traffic pressure: From 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. each day, large numbers of residents drive to hospitals for appointments or to visit patients.
If vehicle throughput is low, queues at the car-park entrance spill onto main roads, causing serious congestion and affecting the mood of patients and visitors.
Poor entrance and exit layout: At underground car parks, drivers often need to stop and pay at the exit, which takes considerable time. If throughput,
especially exit throughput, is not improved, queues are common during peak periods. Some hospitals use only a few gates as main exits, which are far from
sufficient to handle more than 10,000 vehicle movements per day. This restricts traffic flow and leaves utilisation across entrances and exits severely unbalanced.
Poor internal traffic organisation: Construction work or the layout of hospital buildings may occupy or block some surrounding passages.
Some roads may become impassable, preventing an internal circulation loop and seriously affecting the movement of visitors' vehicles.
Unsystematic internal traffic signs: Surveys show that internal traffic signs are often unclear and poorly organised. First-time visitors may park near the main
gate or follow traffic to another building without knowing where other parking spaces or the underground-car-park entrance are located.
Insufficient parking guidance service: The car park is, in a sense, the hospital's first reception area, yet staffing and service quality at hospital parking operations vary widely.
Some hospitals rely on military personnel for guidance, even though they are not professional parking-service staff. Others have older on-site cashiers or weak service awareness.
Some provide staff only at the entrance and exit booths, with no one to patrol the car park or answer questions.
Disorderly parking therefore goes unmanaged and indirectly delays patients' medical visits.
Limitations of hospital fee-collection methods: Manually handwritten or torn tickets, once common, are inefficient and can easily trigger disputes.
In view of limited hospital parking resources and congestion on surrounding roads, Dashou Control believes that easing the parking conflict is urgent.
Solutions should combine internal and external measures, implement actions by category and address both symptoms and root causes.
Alongside smart technology and improved hardware, hospitals should strengthen traffic diversion and raise service standards so that parking problems can be gradually relieved.
Hospitals have continued to invest substantial effort in parking operations to ease the difficulty patients and visitors face when parking for medical care.
Hospital parking difficulty and congestion on surrounding roads have both external and internal causes, so they must be addressed together through short- and
long-term planning and comprehensive coordination. Increasing parking supply, redesigning entrance and exit flows, restoring internal circulation, adding intelligent
parking equipment and strengthening standardised guidance are all necessary measures.
Smart Parking-Management Solution
Considering hospital parking characteristics and demand, Ruanjie Intelligent has developed a complete smart-parking system for hospital car parks.
It includes a ticketless parking-management system, a self-service payment system and a vehicle-finding terminal with parking-guidance functions.
The system addresses access, payment, space guidance and vehicle finding, providing the public with convenient, practical and comfortable parking services.
Starting from these key issues is essential to solving hospital parking problems at their source.
Hospital parking facilities are typically used by temporary, one-time visitors. There are many users, and their stays are short.
The parking-management system must therefore have low operating costs, be easy to use, remain solid and reliable,
and support commercial fee-processing requirements. Ruanjie Intelligent's solution is a smart parking-management system developed
and manufactured by Ruanjie Intelligent, with the following features.
1. Very large ticket capacity for high volumes of temporary users
The large ticket capacity means that the ticket box does not need to be opened frequently for replenishment. Because vehicle volumes are high,
a ticket dispenser with a small card-storage capacity is unsuitable. The solution uses a standard barcode paper-ticket dispenser that issues one-time
tickets and meets the internationalised requirements of a business centre, while avoiding frequent replenishment and improving equipment stability.
Dashou's PM910 automatic ticket-dispensing and fee-management system provides this function and enables rapid entry through automatic ticket collection.
2. Long-range card reading for rapid passage
Human-centred long-range card reading is now standard equipment for next-generation car parks. Most existing parking systems use traditional
short-range card reading. Drivers must stop and complete several card-related actions each time they enter or leave, which is slow and inefficient.
Dashou Control's Bluetooth long-range readers, long-range readers and medium-range readers all support rapid reading and writing, allowing vehicles to
pass without stopping, slowing down or opening a window. This simplifies entry and exit procedures and shortens passage time.
The system detects space status in real time, reports full areas and guides users to designated spaces through voice and LED prompts. Intelligent guidance is essential for multi-level car parks.
A remaining-space display at each main entrance shows the number of available spaces in each area.
A system information display at each main entrance shows the detailed area layout and guides drivers along the simplest route.
A space display at each area entrance shows the number of available spaces in that area.
Information displays at the turnstile doors of fire compartments guide drivers out of the car park by the fastest safe route during an emergency or fire.
4. Simple, easy-to-use guidance with voice, LED and traffic signals
Hospital users have different levels of familiarity with the site. Without adequate guidance, drivers may be unsure how to enter or leave,
causing entrance and exit congestion and complaints. At narrow passages or entrances and exits with fast traffic, traffic lights should be installed.
A red light indicates that a vehicle is approaching from the opposite direction and reminds drivers to proceed carefully.
5. Self-service payment with multiple convenient options
In addition to cash payment at the booth, the management operator can introduce self-service payment and the “E Card”
electronic wallet to address the limited number of exits at Zhongshan Hospital's underground car park and reduce congestion caused by stopping to pay at the exit.
At a self-service payment terminal near a lift lobby, users enter the license plate number, confirm the vehicle image and fee information shown by the system,
and pay by cash or E Card. After payment, the system reserves a 15-minute exit period. The driver can leave during this period without stopping again to pay. At the exit,
E Card self-service card payment also reduces the time spent making change and improves exit throughput. Ruanjie has also put forward the following measures for hospital parking.
Additional Hospital Parking Measures
Moderately reduce the proportion of staff-only spaces: In general, spaces for hospital-owned vehicles can be limited to approximately 30%.
More parking resources can then be opened to visitors. Staff should be encouraged to use nearby car parks, where they are more familiar with
the surrounding parking layout than outside visitors, or to use hospital shuttle buses. Adding shuttle routes and increasing service frequency can reduce
staff reliance on private cars and free more spaces for visitors.
Add temporary entrances and exits: Use smaller hospital gates as temporary entrances and exits and open them during the morning and
lunchtime peaks to reduce traffic pressure on the main gates.
Improve traffic signs: Re-plan and standardise traffic signs across the hospital according to current traffic flows. Area and directional
signs should be clear, complete, non-duplicative, standardised and user-friendly.
Strengthen guidance service: Use parking administrators for on-site traffic direction and guidance. Equip guidance staff with
communication tools and guide vehicles by area from 7:00 a.m. each day.
Use nearby parking resources to divert traffic: Depending on local conditions, cooperate with car parks at stadiums, libraries,
cultural centres and residential communities to share spaces at different times. When the hospital car park reaches capacity,
hospital staff can divert drivers to available facilities. External traffic signs and media publicity are also important,
and roadside parking-guidance signs can help divert surrounding traffic.
Use pricing to regulate demand: Raise hospital parking fees where appropriate to reduce congestion and support green transport.
Higher prices can limit unnecessary vehicle entry, shorten stays inside the hospital and increase space turnover, thereby improving traffic order and car-park utilisation.
Only by addressing the real causes and giving hospital parking the attention it deserves can the problem be treated at both the symptom and root-cause levels.
Increasing supply, redesigning entrance and exit flows, restoring internal circulation, adding intelligent parking equipment and strengthening standardised guidance are all necessary measures.