SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio is the first airport nationwide to utilize a new advanced technology service for its parking garage.
With the airport expecting the busiest Thanksgiving travel period ever, they announced the parking technology on Monday.
“This is an entirely new experience, truly driven by frontier technology and advancements in artificial intelligence,” said Alex Israel, the CEO and co-founder of Metropolis.
Metropolis is a private company that runs the parking technology, and a team came to San Antonio on Monday to do some demonstrations for the press.
The first big change is parking without check-in or check-out.
The team showed the website where travelers can enroll their car through its license plate.
“It takes 40 seconds. What we’re able to do is actually create a fingerprint of your vehicle and identify your vehicle when you first arrive. Send you a text message welcoming you back, and then seamlessly charging you when you leave your home,” Israel said.
They had a test car pulled up, had their license plate scanned, and, in seconds, were approved and let through without needing a ticket.
“The way our system works: if somebody drives in through our entry gate and we have cameras that capture an image of your vehicle coming in, not just the license plate, but metadata around your vehicle,” Israel said.
Once you’re in the system, you stay in the system for future trips, and travelers can add up to two secondary vehicles to their accounts.
Metropolis Northeast Director of Operations Ping Liu then showed how travelers can reserve a spot in advance and avoid having to circle the garage.
On the screen, Liu showed the platform: “We can see that short-term garages are already booked out. We can look for a valet long-term parking garage, the economy lot.”
Metropolis is offering discounts from Dec. 5 through Dec. 20 for all visitors who book through our reservations platform.
The last demonstration was of an innovative bag check inside the parking garage itself.
“It allows you to relieve yourself of your luggage here in the self-parking garage. Passengers interested in using the service can either provide their boarding pass or flight information to enroll in the service,” said Billy Arden, the Senior VP of Operations for Metropolis company Bags Inc.
The mock traveler in the demo used her boarding pass to check in her luggage.
“Our agent will now review the flight information, validate the passenger identification tag and weigh the bag, and provide the claim check to the passenger,” Arden said.
The bag then heads to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for screening, like any other luggage that’s checked in.
To qualify for the bag check, you have to:
- Arrive two hours before your flight
- Be traveling within the U.S.
- Use these airlines: American, Delta, Frontier, Alaska, and soon, Southwest will be added.
It’s one more innovation that San Antonio International Airport representatives said they are thrilled to be the first airport chosen for the new technology.
To that, Israel said San Antonio is the perfect place because “San Antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in North America, and it just experienced experienced the busiest year in its airport’s history. San Antonio International Airport continues to stay ahead of the curve, leading the way by expanding terminals, developing new routes, and deploying remarkable new technology. We’ve created something that all other airports are going to want to replicate.”
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