Request For Information: Touch-free Parking in Parks and Revenue

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking proposals from vendors to provide touch-free parking fee collection systems and revenue tracking applications for its parks statewide. The DCR is looking for automated gate systems, pay-and-display kiosks, mobile payment options, and other technologies to enable contactless parking and fee collection, as well as a revenue application that can aggregate and track revenue from various sources, including parking fees and park passes. The RFI response period ends on November 23, 2020, and the DCR intends to award one or two vendors by December 15, 2020 to have the new systems operational by April 1, 2021. The RFI does not specify a contract value, but the DCR currently collects revenue from approximately 52 of its 205 parks, selling over 500,000 day-use parking passes in 2019.

The RFI is open to all vendors, and there is no mention of any set-aside designations or restrictions on the types of organizations that can respond. The DCR currently uses Passport handheld systems for parking enforcement, and the proposed solution must be compatible with this existing system. The revenue application must be able to accept information from all listed sources and integrate with any future revenue collection systems. While an incumbent vendor is providing pay and display parking units, this new solicitation represents a completely new requirement, and the exact budget amount is undetermined due to the broad scope of the project.