Location Codes for Parking and EV Charging Spots

Parking is a location problem with a twist: the place people want to reach is the entrance, not the building. A car park may have its pedestrian door on one street and its vehicle ramp on another. A charging station might be in a corner of a supermarket lot that the navigation app treats as one big blob.

Entrance, not centroid

Mapping apps often route to the centre or the registered address of a site. For a car park, that can mean arriving at a pedestrian door with no ramp in sight, or at the exit side of a one-way system. Operators who publish a code for the vehicle entrance give drivers a point that matters.

What to publish

• Vehicle entrance of each car park, with a note on height limits if relevant.
• Pedestrian exit or the lift lobby, for drivers meeting someone.
• Charging hub, one code per cluster of chargers.
• Individual charger bays at sites where positions matter, such as rapid chargers at the far end of a lot.
• Reserved bays for residents or permit holders, which are easier to find on a plan with a code.

Where it fits

Operators can place codes on their website, on signage near the entrance of a bigger site, and in booking confirmations for pre-booked parking. A navigation link behind each code lets the driver start directions straight away.

Cautions

A code does not carry information about level or bay number. For multi-level car parks, add "Level 2" in your own text. It also cannot show opening hours, tariffs or whether a space is available, so keep a status channel for that. A 3 m by 3 m cell is useful for marking a charger pair; it is not an engineering drawing and it cannot show cable reach or clearance.

For charging operators who record installations, a code per charger attaches nicely to the asset record, much as in utilities and meter reading. Operators renting vehicles may also see car rental and sharing. The documentation explains how to look up or generate codes programmatically.

Verify on site

Check each published code in person, at the entrance, once. A pin that is thirty metres off in a busy street can send drivers the wrong way, so verify before printing it on signs or in a brochure.