Rouyn-Noranda Airport (YUY) is located in the region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue within the French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada. It serves the city of Rouyn-Noranda and represents a gateway to northern resources. In fact, it is one of the most northern airports in the world - planes take off to reach the North Pole from there!
On a weekly basis, the airport acts as a regional hub and operating basis for many public and private companies involved into mining/smelting activities and the development of natural resources. The majority of passengers are business travelers spending several days/weeks offsite at remote destinations, alternating bi-weekly or bi-monthly shifts totalling more than 100,000 a year.
Shortly before the pandemic lockdown reached Canada, the airport management was looking to invest into the improvement of its facilities: building a new food court, new site signage, and renovating the car park. At that time, the latter was laid out as a straightforward 2-entry, 2-exit lot, offering 655 spaces to employees and travelers – transient and seasonal alike. The plan was to install new equipment from HUB, and manage it through HUB’s Janus Management Software (JMS). Once installed, training of the airport staff to control vehicle access, monitoring the occupancy over time, and producing accurate reports became an opportunity for data-mining.
Once the public health risk escalated to a global issue, the request for much stricter safety measures became mandatory at Rouyn-Noranda Airport too: an immediate issue to tackle at all access points of the airport. This triggered a fast and effective adaptation of the original parking project, to an even more touchless and all-digital system. The new plan relied heavily on the integration of LPR technology into JMS, and the mobile/tablet use of the management software.
All cameras, supplied by Survision, read front plates and rear plates of vehicles in the parking lanes, achieving an accuracy rate of over 97%. The license plate data is instantly fed into the management software, and guarantee a seamless exit to all vehicles whose plate matches with the data stored into JMS records at the moment the same vehicle first entered the car park.
The speed and precision advantages of LPR might not be new to the parking industry, but the evolved technology of Survision devices have proved to solve the ticket swapping problem in this specific installation. Not only does LPR reduce the risk of in-lane fraud (vehicles passing close behind the previous ones) but it also prevents from the mischievous ability to ticket swap.
The implementation of Survision cameras for license plate recognition (LPR) has allowed HUB to deliver an effective change with little effort, making lane access more fluid and secure.
Airport staff using JMS as a mobile app, have quickly adapted to the portable version of the management software – and are making the most of it: status of the equipment, video-streaming of the parking cameras, and occupancy data are under control at all times.
The digital transformation of the airport will soon take another step with HUB’s app JPass.
In the near future, it will be made available to travelers and airport staff, thus making their parking experience digital and stress-free. They will be able to reserve their parking spot in advance, access the car park without unnecessary contact with buttons and equipment, and pay from their smartphone. Another touchless solution designed to improve the passengers’ journey from the very beginning!