Parking services rolls out first Automated Licence Plate Recognition patrol vehicle

U of M parking services has rolled out its first Automated Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) patrol vehicle. A Chevy Volt was chosen to reduce environmental impact.

ALPR is an automated method of collecting licence plate information from university parkers through cameras mounted on the vehicle. While the vehicle drives through parking lots, it scans licence plates and then cross references the plate information to ensure the parked vehicle has paid for parking.

The City of Winnipeg has been running ALPR vehicles for over five years.

ALPR changes only how information is gathered. An automated system is more efficient and less cumbersome, especially in extreme weather. A privacy impact assessment was performed and received the green light from the U of M’s access and privacy office.

Thanks to ALPR, parking services has already added the Parkmobile payment app and has changed to pay-by-plate casual parking that doesn’t require a receipt to be displayed on the dash.  In the future, hangtags will no longer be required at all.