The Kelham Island Museum is a historical museum dedicated to steelmaking and Sheffield’s industrial history, situated in the city’s vibrant quarter. The museum is a unique Victorian landmark, known for reflecting the city’s authentic urban spaces.
The venue opens its doors for events such as weddings, civil ceremonies, and big corporate dinners. With the landmark offering various attractions and services, they offered free parking for their visitors.
The museum administration wanted to introduce effective parking management and wanted a proper pay and stay system for the car park. More yellow lines were coming into the area and it meant people were likely to use the museum’s free car park with no place to park on the road.
So, with the possibility of space misuse and free parking privileges, the chances of staff parking and visitor parking disruption was high. So, the museum required a system to prevent misuse and maintain space availability for visitors of the venue.
Their requirement for a multifaceted parking strategy was to initiate change without compromising the museum’s visitor experience. The museum was also searching for a way to offer more parking space with the frequent flow of visitors.
The establishment also owns another car park on nearby street with access only system. They were searching for a way
We introduced 24-hour pay and stay parking in the main museum car park. The pay and stay system would be made effective with the ANPR system.
With pay and stay and ANPR, a systematic parking system will be introduced for the museum. Any visitor willing to use the museum car park has to pay for their parking. We set up an online system, trained the museum administration to access it for creating their allow list for car parks.
The allow list was mainly for staff parking, tenants, and frequent delivery visitors. The venue frequently held events and weddings too, and required an allow list for such occasions. So, with a customisable allow list and enforcement in place via ANPR, the museum functioned with pay and stay parking.
If anyone were to engage in unauthorised parking, avoiding parking payment, ANPR would help identify it. The same data gathered by ANPR would also be used to understand car park usage patterns for operational decisions.
A user-friendly payment system had to be introduced for various user groups using the car park. So, we installed payment machines and introduced an option to pay online, a contactless/card method, and payment via a parking application.
To support the payment system, our team was also available to resolve any payment queries or confusion among visitors.
The museum also has access to only the car park on the museum’s nearby street, close to a famous pub. The museum wanted ways to generate revenue from the space and also utilise the parking space.
So, we converted it into a 24-hour pay-and-stay car park. With this car park, we limited the space available for pay-and-stay customers compared to the main museum car park. It was initiated mainly to have space availability for museum staff and pub staff.
The online portal authorisation system for this car park was available to both the museum and the pub. They have the flexibility to customise it to their requirement. We set up a pay-by-app-only system, given that it would have a smaller user base than the main museum car park.
To make things easier with an authorised list for staff members, tenants, and other visitors, we added iPads in the car park. So, all authorised users have to do is enter their vehicle registration number on the iPad. It’s integrated with the same online system we’ve set up to customise allow lists for museums and pubs.
Bransby Wilson’s solution for Kelham Island Museum proved to be effective and helpful in bringing in a new parking management system.
Our Pay and Stay parking solution for both car parks paved the way for better flow of traffic and usage patterns. It has become a steady revenue stream for the owners while preventing unauthorised parking.
With parking spaces allocated for staff and customers, there’s no confusion or hassle with a mix-up on parking bays. The iPads and system to manage the allow list helps run the operation smoothly. There’s good traffic flow of visitors on both car parks and space is well monitised with parking bays being fully utilised.