Recent News

April 2008
Parking's on the Move
Technological innovation has become an important aspect of parking, whether to keep pace with changes to traffic orders, stay one step ahead of criminal gangs, improve safety for civil enforcement officers or make life easier for disabled drivers.

Nowhere is there more emphasis on innovation than at this year’s Parkex, with a wealth of software, mapping and communications systems on display and more than twenty exhibitors offering cashless parking solutions.

Hull City Council lays claim to the first such scheme, which it introduced in May 2002, in partnership with mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson, to support Hull’s aim of becoming one of the UK’s Top 10 digital cities. Around 200 drivers took part in the pilot, using their mobile phones to book and pay for space in ten Council owned car parks.

Since then, pay-by-phone and pay-by-text parking have been taken up by local authorities all over the UK for reasons of convenience (the motorist’s) and revenue protection (the Council’s – at its height, theft from parking meters was costing Westminster Council around £20,000 per week). Most London boroughs now offer some form of cashless parking, with meters disappearing altogether in parts of Westminster.

Not all drivers approve, as some find it more difficult to use a mobile phone than to insert coins. One observer, Mike Hawkes of Broca Communications pointed out recently in the Mail on Sunday that drivers could unwittingly be exposing themselves to greater risk from thieves. "Every picture I have seen of cashless parking schemes has shown someone with a mobile in one hand and a credit card in the other," he says. "The only thing missing is the guy with a baseball bat waiting round the corner."

This is an abstract from Alistair Turk's article in Surveyor magazine 10 April 2008. To read on: Surveyor magazine

site design by SS

Alpha Parking Ltd
4th Floor Cromwell House
Fulwood Place
High Holborn
London WC1V 6HZ
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7242 2567
parkingenquiries@aparking.co.uk