Ambrand.com

As a frequent user of on street parking in Cork City, Ireland I use many paper parking discs. These are purchased from newsagents in booklets and then used individually, the user parks in a space, removes a disc scratches off the time of arrival, and places the disc on the dashboard so it is visible from the outside. Each street has a maximum parking time, typically 1 hour in the CBD and 2 hours outside. Cars are not allowed to stay any longer then this on the same street, even if a driver visits the car and uses a new disc.

It was with much interest that I read about a relatively new system called Park by phone a private company that has an agreement with Cork City Council. A driver registers a car and is issued with a permament credit card sized windscreen sticker carrying a bar code. When a driver parks a car instead of using a paper disc he calls a touch tone voice system enters their “PIN” (the four digits that appear on the windscreen sticker), street name as four digit from a alpha > numeric list. The cost of parking is reduced slightly to take account of the phone call.

Clearly this system saves the driver maintaining a stock of paper parking discs in the glove box, but it is worth registering? Well for the purposes of this article I did, and can now evaluate the system from a drivers perspective.

• As soon as a car is registered the sum of EUR 15 is taken from the provided credit/debit card. So unless you are a frequent user you are just supporting someone elses high interest deposit account.
• The driver must tell the system the name of the street where the car is parked.
  • This requires looking for a street sign with a name, leaving you car technically illegally parked for up possibly a couple of minutes.
  • When you do have the name of the street you don’t tell the system usig the logical touchtone spelling method, eg Cook St would be 2665, that spells Cook which predicative text even gets, if it spelled two possibilites the user could be prompted to select the correct one by pressing a key. Instead of this system each street has a code that is based on the order it joined the system, so Cook St is 1013, so you must carry a list in your glovebox, and of course reprint the list as they add more streets. The City Council are thus likely taxpayers money on new signage
  • another problem is telling the system your street is you are the committed to that one street, whereas with a paper parking disc you can your car to another street and enjoy the remaining minutes there de facto.
• If it’s parked illegally you car is more likely to receive a parking ticket, then one not in the system. Traffc wardens have handheld devices that can scan the windscreen barcode sticker, and then query the park by phone database to check the car has, paid for parking, still has time left, is on the right street. But a side effect is in doing so the device can populate the fields on the ticket issuing menu (registration plate number etc). The warden, being human, might often bypass a ticket because it takes time to enter such details manually, even then there is a chance that a lawyered-up driver could challenge a ticket and win as the warden has no third party evidence that an offence took place. However the park by phone system will have a record of times providing such evidence.

For the above reasons I won’t be using Park by phone again. I’m not connected to Cork City Council or Park by phone, this is a review that I put together from my own experiences, it is possible that some will admire the system. If you would like to comment or tell me about a correction then please use the form below.