AI Will Soon Handle San Antonio Airport Parking

From now on, when you park your car before flying out of San Antonio International Airport, you will do so with the help of artificial intelligence.

Last week, San Antonio International became the first airport in the U.S. to replace its ticket-based parking system — which had visitors swipe their credit cards at kiosks before being let into a parking lot or garage — with license plate recognition technology offered by the startup Metropolis Technologies, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Santa Monica, Calif.

The overhaul comes after Metropolis acquired the Chicago-based parking giant SP Plus, which the city of San Antonio had picked in April to manage the airport's parking and shuttles. The airport had previously managed its own parking, but officials decided to privatize the operation after a surge in traffic had put the system under strain.

Upon approaching a parking area, visitors must now use their smartphones to create a profile with Metropolis using a QR code, inputting their credit card information. When they leave, the company will automatically extract payment, notifying them on their phones. If visitors already have a profile, they can just drive through each way.

Visitors reacted well to the technology during a soft launch last week, said Ryan Rocha, chief of operations with the airport, in a phone interview on Monday, after a public unveiling attended by Alex Israel, Metropolis' co-founder and CEO. The technology will be “transformative” to the airport’s parking, he said.

Metropolis, which was founded in 2017 in Los Angeles and opened a new headquarters in Nashville this month, envisions making its technology so widespread that motorists can drive into and out of parking areas across the U.S. without having to stop their vehicle, much less scan a credit card or enter their license plate number into a machine. The technology recognizes vehicles through “computer vision,” according to the company’s website.

Visitors to the airport will also be able to use the Metropolis app to reserve a spot, according to a news release from the airport. The airport will continue to set the parking rates under city ordinance and will offer parking discounts until Dec. 20, Rocha said.

In May, Metropolis purchased SP Plus, a publicly traded company founded in 1929 with nearly 20,000 employees, after raising $1.8 billion in venture capital funding. That came a month after the San Antonio City Council had approved a contract with SP Plus. The city chose the company from among five bidders, considering its depth of experience and the compensation package it would offer to parking workers who up to then had been employed by the city.

Metropolis’ acquisition of SP Plus was already in the works when council voted, with SP Plus’ shareholders deciding in February to agree to a merger plan.

The city and SP Plus signed a contract with an initial term of 10 years and with two optional five-year extensions.

In Nashville, Metropolis has been the subject of complaints by motorists who say they have been mistakenly charged for parking in garages that they hadn’t entered — including the city’s mayor, Freddie O’Connell, according to reporting by local news outlets. As of March, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office had received 192 complaints about the company, according to the news station WSMV 4. There have also been complaints in Houston.

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