This article describes a real deployment, anonymised to respect the confidentiality agreement with the client. The figures and timescales are the project's actual ones.
The starting point
The City Council had a short-stay blue zone introduced in 2014, managed with paper discs and ticket machines. The residents' green zone was managed in a spreadsheet that the Mobility department updated by hand whenever a resident renewed their annual permit. The two lists had no connection with each other, and the only way to check whether a number plate was entitled to park was for an officer to look it up manually.
The problem was not operational: it was one of control. Officers spent more time checking permits than issuing fines, residents complained that they could not park in their own streets, and the accounting reconciliation of takings was done at the end of the month with a high margin of error.
The City Council's technical team set us the challenge of unifying everything in six weeks so as to be ready for the summer high season.
Decisions in the first two weeks
The first job was not technical but one of cataloguing. Before configuring Aparca360, we had to decide how the existing permits would be categorised:
- Registered residents with a vehicle in their name: green zone, free of charge, automatic annual renewal.
- Residents with a company vehicle: green zone with supporting documents, valid for one year.
- Traders in the historic centre: specific whitelist with loading and unloading hours.
- Municipal service and emergency vehicles: permanent whitelist with no time restrictions.
- Electric vehicles without a LEZ badge: whitelist with a 50% discount in the blue zone.
Each category was modelled as an independent whitelist within Aparca360, with its own validity rules, applicable geolocation and charges. Integration with the municipal register meant that the residents' list updated automatically when someone registered or deregistered.
The physical installation: three strategically placed ANPR cameras
The City Council already had two traffic control cameras, which were put to use. Three additional ANPR cameras were added at the critical points: the entrance to the historic centre, the seafront avenue under the greatest tourist pressure and the health centre car park. These cameras read number plates and check them in real time against the central Aparca360 system.
The flow is simple: when a number plate enters a regulated street, the camera captures it, sends the query to the API and receives a response in under 800 ms with three pieces of data: whether it has a permit, what type, and until when it is valid. If it has none, it is logged with a timestamp and location so that the officer can issue a fine, where appropriate.
The residents' app
The deployment included the Aparca360 mobile app with two main flows:
- Blue zone payment by actual minutes (not rounded hours), with automatic renewal and a notification when there are 10 minutes left before the session ends.
- Linking a number plate as a resident, with automatic verification against the municipal register. Once linked, the number plate goes onto the green list without the need for in-person paperwork.
The resident sign-up flow was the one we iterated on most. The first version required uploading an ID card, the vehicle's registration document and a certificate of registration on the municipal register. That was too much friction for a free public service. The final version only requires a photo ID and authorises an automated query of the municipal register via API. Verification is practically instant for registered residents.
Results after six months
The following data cover the full six months after going live:
| Indicator | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Average time spent on zone enforcement | 4 h/day | 40 min/day |
| Residents' complaints about parking | ~30/month | ~6/month |
| Blue zone takings (seasonally adjusted) | baseline | +18% |
| Resident renewals processed online | 0% | 94% |
| Time to process a resident sign-up | 3-5 days | < 5 minutes |
The figure that most struck the client was not the takings but the residents' complaints. The most frequent complaint — "I can't park in my own street" — disappeared not because of the software, but because of the deterrent effect of the ANPR cameras. When everyone knows that enforcement is automatic and constant, occasional drivers stop taking spaces reserved for residents.
What we would change if we did it again
Three lessons we have already applied to subsequent deployments:
1. The initial audit is the most important part
The first two weeks were spent mapping how the City Council managed permits in reality, not how its documented procedure said they were managed. That difference is critical: the procedure is the theory; what the software has to digitise is the practice.
2. Municipal communication alongside the deployment
The City Council took charge of communication with residents: signs in the regulated streets, a press release, an open information session. This may not seem technical, but it is decisive: the app works if people know about it and use it. We started weeks 3 and 4 once the signs were already up in the street.
3. The first month means intensive follow-up
During the first month we assigned a Labrax technician to support the client remotely: weekly review of incidents, adjustments to camera configuration and monitoring of residents' take-up. Three real bugs were found (all fixed in under 48 hours) and four operational parameters that only emerge with real data were adjusted.
Can it be exported to other municipalities?
Yes, with two caveats. The whitelist model and integration with the municipal register can be reused directly. What changes between municipalities is:
- The catalogue of permits (every City Council has its own particularities).
- The physical infrastructure (cameras, machines, connectivity).
- The local culture around digital payment, which affects the pace of take-up.
We have since replicated this pattern in three other municipalities, all with similar results in enforcement and resident satisfaction KPIs. The average deployment time has come down to five weeks because we now have configuration templates and experience in mapping permits.
If your City Council faces the same challenge — blue zones, green zones and specific permits living side by side — the model is proven and implementation is quick.
