The City of Kirkland, Washington, has picked eleven-x to implement smart parking in the city’s busy downtown area. Eleven-x will implement its eXactpark Smart Parking system, which provides real-time parking monitoring. The project is part of Kirkland’s Smart Cities Initiative to increase operational efficiency, public transparency and improved quality of life. The City of Kirkland is aiming to gain an accurate understanding of parking usage in the downtown area to inform development of community-centric urban policies.

Kirkland is a picturesque city located on the eastern shore of Lake Washington that attracts large numbers of visitors. The downtown area of the city, known for its waterfront access to Lake Washington, has experienced increasing traffic volumes and greater demand for parking in recent years. Limited availability of premium parking, such as free on-street parking and low-cost $1 per hour parking in two of the city-owned lots, has resulted in difficulties for residents, employees, and visitors. In response, the City is aiming to implement measures to effectively address the needs of drivers with existing parking resources.

“The eXactpark smart parking solution will be able to provide us with 24/7 insights on each individual parking stall, which will ultimately help us develop evidence-based policies to benefit our community,” said Julie Underwood, the Public Works Director of Kirkland, Washington.

Eleven-x is currently deploying 500 sensors and wireless gateways to capture stall occupancy in on-street spaces, surface lots, and waterfront parking areas in Kirkland’s busy downtown areas. The cloud-based eXactpark software will be integrated with the City’s new online parking data collection and management platform using standard APIs to provide meaningful parking occupancy data and analytics for City planners. Importantly, since the eXactpark sensors do not employ camera technology, none of the data collected will retain identifiable or personal information, ensuring privacy.

“In an increasingly connected world, where data plays a crucial role in improving urban mobility, it is just as critical to uphold the privacy of individuals,” said Dan Mathers, CEO, eleven-x. “This commitment is central to fostering public confidence in the deployment of data-driven parking technologies and is a core reason why our smart parking solution employs autonomous data management.”

The eXactpark system is designed to allow drivers to find available parking quickly and easily in real-time. It delivers accurate data 24/7 to enable use cases such as curbside management, demand-based pricing and improved compliance while helping optimise parking resources.

Kirkland has a population of 93,570 and occupies 18 square miles. The City is near several major transportation routes including Interstate 405, State Route 520, and Interstate 5. These routes connect the City economically and socially to the greater Seattle area.