SenSen & Turnstone partner on curb data for cities

SenSen and Turnstone have partnered to supply parking intelligence data to municipalities across North America, combining their existing city parking data tools.

The arrangement brings together SenSen's Live Awareness platform and Turnstone's parking data systems to give local authorities a view of curb activity, parking demand, compliance and turnover through real-time and daily updates. The service is designed to show how blocks, zones and corridors are performing across a city network.

Municipal authorities face growing pressure to manage curbsides more closely as they juggle congestion, mobility, parking enforcement and urban growth. The partnership is intended to give city teams more detailed information about how parking assets are being used and where enforcement and pricing decisions may need to change.

Early work in North American cities has already produced measurable results. In one case, a city identified more than 500 underused parking machines and tested parking rates intended to improve turnover.

In another city, the data showed that some neighbourhoods had parking non-compliance rates above 30%. After the city changed enforcement deployment using that information, citywide non-compliance fell 10.2%.

Curb data

The curb has become a more closely watched part of city infrastructure because it sits at the centre of parking, loading, traffic flow and access for businesses and residents. Yet much of the activity there has been difficult for authorities to track continuously.

SenSen, which is listed on the ASX, focuses on AI and data analytics for smart city enforcement, traffic intelligence and computer vision. Its SenFORCE platform is already used in North American cities including Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Chicago for automated licence plate recognition, citation issuance and curb detection.

Turnstone specialises in parking data analysis. Its platform combines payment transaction data, parking regulations and inventory feeds to model municipal curb infrastructure and advise cities on enforcement, rates and vehicle flow. Its users include Seattle, Denver, Santa Rosa and Berkeley.

The new joint offering is intended to work alongside systems municipalities already use, rather than requiring a full replacement of existing operations. That may matter for local governments, which often run parking and enforcement through a patchwork of legacy software, field staff processes and outsourced providers.

For city officials, access to a unified stream of curb data could help answer practical questions about whether pricing is producing turnover, whether enforcement officers are deployed in the right areas and whether parking inventory is aligned with demand. The examples cited suggest some cities may be operating with blind spots around both underused assets and non-compliance hotspots.

Ben Pisch, Vice President of Clients and Markets, North America at SenSen, described the partnership as a way to expose data that has often sat unused inside city parking systems. "There's a remarkable amount of intelligence locked inside the everyday operation of a city's parking program and until now much of this has been untapped," he said.

He added: "What we've built with Turnstone is a way to bring that intelligence to the surface to help cities make smarter decisions. The conversation can now change to 'Here's what is happening, and here's what to do about it.'"

Cole Jaillet, Chief Executive Officer of Turnstone, said cities have long understood the value of the curb but lacked visibility into how it was functioning in practice. "Cities have always known the curb is valuable. What they haven't had is a way to see it clearly," he said.

He added: "This partnership gives them that view. We are helping cities discover remarkable things and, together with SenSen, deliver actionable insights to city decision-makers that have historically been out of reach. Even better, this joint solution is built to work alongside the systems cities already have in place, with no disruption to existing operations."