City Council
Report
City Council Meeting: February 12, 2019
Agenda Item: 3.J
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: David Martin, Director, Parking Operations (PCD)
Subject: Award RFP to Smarking, Inc. for Parking Data Analytics Management Services
Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council:
1. Award RFP #182 to Smarking, Inc., a California based company, for the parking data management and analytics services for the Planning and Community Development Department;
2. Authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with Smarking, Inc. in an amount not to exceed $1,219,000 (including a 10% contingency) for five years with future year funding contingent on Council budget approval.
Summary
The City owns and operates 42 public parking facilities with approximately 14,000 available off-street parking spaces, with an additional 5,800 on-street parking meters deployed throughout the city. Currently, several different parking management systems are employed to capture data and manage transactions at these facilities. Staff seeks to data-mine the parking data from these off-street parking facilities and on-street parking meters to proactively manage parking demand and improve the customer experience. As part of the City’s larger focus on using data analytics to drive overall performance, staff recommends awarding an agreement to Smarking, Inc. to provide the City with one streamlined parking data management system that allows staff to aggregate vast quantities of data to maximize future parking availability and pricing, and make more informed staffing decisions based on data analytics.
Discussion
Due to the locations and unique designs of the various public parking facilities, the 2 of 6
city currently uses four customized parking access and revenue control systems that provide payment options and access to the facilities and on-street parking meters.
These systems process massive quantities of data that are difficult to arrange in understandable formats. Staff activated a provision in the existing agreement with SP Plus (#10201 CCS), the City’s parking operator, and Smarking, Inc. as the subcontractor, to aggregate the City’s parking data from the various parking technology systems into one holistic data analytics platform that essentially processes the data into a single, consistent tabular and graphical format. The work effort was conducted within the Planning and Community Development Department budget as part of a pilot program to produce a comprehensive parking utilization and rate study to understand the effects on the parking enterprise after the 2016 arrival of the Expo Light Rail.
The data aggregation was done in such a way to protect the privacy of our parking services users. All of the anonymous parking transaction data was aggregated onto a secured and proprietary platform that remains in compliance with all applicable current and amended Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”) security requirements. The parking transaction data is encrypted and then transferred onto servers hosted in the cloud. The data stored on the servers only contains entry/exit ticket information and transaction amounts, and does not contain any customer personal information (e.g. name, credit card number). This is a unique feature of the Smarking tool, and it is customized to work with the data gathering systems that Santa Monica currently uses in its parking operations program. Use of the Smarking, Inc. tools and consultant team members that includes data scientists, engineers, and analysts allowed staff to:
Provide real-time parking occupancy information that can quickly be displayed on our existing and soon to be upgraded dynamic wayfinding signage to reduce parking and traffic congestion throughout the City, as well as improve direction and guidance information broadcast to the public across web-based media
Make more informed operational and staffing deployment decisions based on 3 of 6
peak occupancy and occupancy contribution analysis (e.g. transient parkers versus monthly parkers), thereby improving customer service for residents and visitors using the facilities
Provide policy makers the means to make data driven decisions based on historical and real-time evidence that clearly represents parking behavior throughout the City
Improve the accuracy and frequency around gathering and reporting parking data to stakeholders
Measure and report on the results of policy and pricing decisions more frequently in highly useful graphical and tabular formats Make the City’s parking data more accessible and transparent for use by other City Departments and the public
Make improved land use decisions to strategically repurpose underutilized parking into higher and better uses
Analyze parking demand for each facility and over various time frames, and propose demand-responsive parking pricing strategies to manage the weekday and weekend demands in the Downtown core to Council on March 6, 2018 based on data analytics and predictive demand modeling
The initial $0.2 million pilot partnership with Smarking, Inc. has yielded a significant return on investment, as Council ultimately adopted a new parking pricing strategy during its April 24, 2018 meeting that is still on track to recover the $3-5 million in revenues lost over the last two years due to a downward trend of parking transactions related to changing mobility patterns. To provide some additional context, in the past the City has paid upwards of $0.3 million to consultants for one-off parking pricing and utilization studies, that while successful, were only snapshots in time that did not provide an ongoing parking data management tool for City staff to utilize for future inhouse parking studies. Establishing an ongoing, real-time parking data information system is consistent with data-driven, metrics based 21st century municipal management of its parking enterprise.
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Vendor Selection
RFP Data
RFP Posting
Date
RFP Posted
On
RFP Advertised In
(City Charter &
Municipal Code)
# of Vendors
Downloaded
# of
Submittals
Received
Date
Publicly
Opened
7/16/18 City's Online
Bidding Site
Santa Monica Daily
Press 89 10 9/13/18
RFPs Received Selection Criteria
All Traffic
Solutions eVolving Apps Municipal Code SMMC 2.24.073
Cambridge
Transportation Passport Labs Evaluation Criteria
Training/credentials/experience,
competence/skill, ability to perform
services promptly, sufficiency of
financial/other resources,
character/reputation, and price.
CloudParc, Inc. Smarking, Inc.
Conduent T2 Systems
Cubic
Transportation
Systems
Xaqt, Inc.
Justification to Award
An evaluation panel of representatives from various departments, including Finance, Planning and Community Development, Information Systems, and Human Resources reviewed and ranked all proposals using the criteria set out in the RFP. Based on criteria set out in SMMC 2.24, staff recommends Smarking as the best qualified firm to provide the parking data analytics and management services. As an industry leader in parking data analytics and business technologies, Smarking, Inc.’s deep understanding of parking dynamics and experience with working with over 45 various parking access and revenue control systems (including the City’s current parking technology systems) would allow the City the flexibility to seamlessly integrate with any parking systems vendor. Smarking, Inc. has provided parking data management and pricing policy analysis to other comparable parking operations with similar dynamic characteristics as the City, including the Miami Parking Authority; City of Long Beach; City of Walnut Creek; City of Aspen; City of Santa Cruz; and the City of Grand Rapids. In addition to a very detailed staff data management tool, the Smarking platform would also provide a publicly accessible parking map that would present information of historical and real- 5 of 6
time key parking metrics in an easy to understand visual format, based on a Google Maps layer commonly used on the City’s website, that is accessible via desktops, and mobile devices. The map would be used to help communicate parking dynamics and identify where parking is typically available throughout the City. Smarking would also supplement the data analytics platform with periodic consulting services including regular (at least once a year, if not more frequently) pricing policy and strategy analysis, predictive occupancy and financial modeling, impacts of more sustainable travel modes on parking demand, reporting and analytics support, and related parking rate change/utilization studies. The agreement also provides for the consultants’ participation in stakeholder outreach and City Council meeting presentations. Award of this agreement would permit staff to model several complicated proposed outcomes that support the City’s goals around mobility and land use before presenting choices to City Council.
Past Council Actions
Meeting Date Description
03/06/2018 (Attachment B) Parking Management Pricing Strategies Study Session 04/24/2018 (Attachment C) Adoption of a Resolution Revising Public Parking Rates Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
Staff seeks authority to award a contract with Smarking, Inc. for parking data management and analytics services. Funds are available in the FY 2018-19 Planning and Community Development Department budget.
Future year funding is contingent on Council budget approval.
Request Amount FY 2018-19 Budget
Department/CIP Account #
Total Contract Amount
$237,000 01700008.552010 $1,219,000
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Prepared By: Michael Towler, Principal Administrative Analyst Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. Oaks Initiative Disclosure Form
B. 2018 - Downtown Parking Management Pricing Strategies Study Session - Staff Report
C. 2018 - Adoption of a Resolution Revising Public Parking Rates - Staff Report D. Written Comments