Here at AppyWay, we started life as the AppyParking mobile app. An app for drivers born out of the daily frustration of finding and understanding parking on-street across London. To build the app we created the UK’s largest set of digitised, standardised kerbside data, a quest that led us to realise the untapped potential lying under everyone’s feet.
Today, we’re helping local governments across the UK digitise their kerbside management with innovative tools and solutions, and enabling them to tap into intelligent parking solutions. For the private sector, our Parking API and mobile app unlocks value for businesses across the UK by providing detailed, contextualised parking insights for their fleet and field services operations.
In Wales and with the 5G Wales Unlocked consortium, we head somewhat back to our roots… parking.
Parking can be a great enabler. It enables residents and businesses to access towns and cities, it enables disabled or vulnerable citizens to access services and amenities, and it enables visitors to drive to and see places all across the country. All of these benefit social and economic life in the UK. No one place is more important for enabling access via parking than in the rural communities of the UK.
Parking within rural and semi-rural areas poses a unique challenge, unlike those seen in larger towns and cities. Parking options tend to be very limited and are often in sporadic locations. Because of this, rural village and town centres can be plagued by dangerous parking on narrow roads, verges and pedestrian pathways.
These parking issues impede access for all drivers. It creates a poor experience for disabled and blue badge drivers and it can deter others from visiting necessary services and amenities. For young people within rural communities, poor access can impede education and employment opportunities. As a result of this, some rural communities see anti-social behaviour from young people experiencing a lack of opportunities.
Underpinning the issues around rural parking is a lack of visibility. Local communities and visitors struggle with understanding where they can park, what times are best throughout the day, and whether they should take a different mode of transport.
In Wales the 5G Wales Unlocked consortium is looking to tackle these issues (and more) with innovative solutions that are only made possible by the power of 5G.
Our area of focus is Ebbw Vale where AppyWay and consortium partners BT and Cardiff University will be jumping on the town’s 5G rollout to provide 5G enabled multi-modal transport solutions.
In Ebbw Vale we will be leveraging our recent experience in the West Midlands where we used 5G to provide real-time and predictive parking availability via our driver app. This project saw vehicles equipped with the capability to transfer dash cam imagery via 5G through the AppyWay algorithms to provide drivers with real-time and predictive availability data. This information gave us a much clearer understanding of the peaks and troughs of traffic activity in a certain area of the town at certain points of the day.
AppyWay car with camera delivering 5G powered real-time parking availability
In Ebbw Vale this technology will be facilitated by mounting cameras on local buses and feeding the information into the AppyParking app so residents and visitors can make informed decisions about on-street parking in the area. To further enrich this information, we’re working with Cardiff University, whose AI will be used to process availability in rural car parks via CCTV cameras.
5G has the ability to dramatically improve social and economic life in rural and valley communities and that’s why we’re incredibly excited to be part of 5G Wales Unlocked, working alongside some incredibly innovative organisations. Watch this space for more information and project outcomes.
If you’d like to learn more about this project or to speak to one of our experts, contact us here.
