COMMENT
Written and edited on the M1 and A14 heading south and west. Dispatched from my home via wi-fi and optical fibre.
It is a cold, damp evening in Leicester and I am in the street, standing in line at 17:52 waiting to get a ticket for the parking lot. The line is long and there seems to be some agitation at the front. What is happening, why the wait, why all the fuss and bother? My patience snaps and I walk to the front to take a look, and what I see beggars belief!
A little old lady is helping a young man get a ticket! How come this technological role reversal? Like me it is his first time in central Leicester and he has just met the parking machine from Hades. The sun went down a long time ago and there isn't a lot of light, and we are standing in the open getting wet and cold. But this machine actually asks you to input your car registration number on an unlit keypad that is neither QWERTY nor horizontal, but A to Z and 0 to 9 linear and vertical!
Eventually the line erodes and I get to the front to be confronted by the protocol from Hades. After what seems to be an embarrassingly long time, I clumsily manage to get my ticket and get overcharged at the same time. Don't ask because I can't figure it out! What is happening, why have such a diabolical machine, why inconvenience people so?
Apparently some genius has worked out that people have been handing on their tickets to new arrivals so they could use the unused minutes. And yep, someone has been that stupid and that petty to have a machine produced to scoop up the extra few pence by having the car registration on the tickets to prevent the practice. In this 21st century of high-tech, isn't it absolutely amazing what we can do!
I for one won't be going back to the city of Leicester to spend my time or my money but my internet spending will be taking another hike.
And so to a prediction about unintended consequences! Within five to 10 years we will see many UK towns and cities hollowed out as people desert the real world for the virtual and spend their monies in a far more convenient and welcoming place.
But I suspect the people that design parking meters, create nightmare traffic systems, and all those like them that make life difficult and unpleasant for the populace, will not relate it to their actions in any way. They will most likely be waving a stick at the evil internet and all the ills it has created.
In the old days we could only vote with our feet. Today we can vote with our keyboards - our QWERTY keyboards...
Comments
There are 21 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Also, these machines only take coins. Why make the daily rate £4.70 as it is in Sheffield - this means that I have to get change every day to park - why don't these machines take cards like proper car parks do?
2. Graham Lodge
Peter,
I fully agree with your felling towards a rediculous car parking system and want to add the following two comments, both implicate the car park operator/owner. Firtsly, the transfering, of pay and display tickets is a result of the parking periods not being in small enough units to purchase. Secondly, the designer or implementor is not wholly to blame, as I believe it is the person (or body) that states the requirement and accepts the system that should be called to account.
I would be interested in your thoughts.
3. Stuart Vine
Let's add a few more reasons apart from the nightmare of parking.
1. On the web you can find the item you want and see if it's in stock.
2. The sheer ghastliness of just about any UK shopping centre.
3. Nearly all High Streets are the same, finding anything interesting to buy is becoming increasingly difficult.
4. Chuggers and beggars
5. Saturday staff in shops
6. The feeling that you've accidentally entered a zombie movie - particularly during the January sales.
7. Luton - see all off the above and add squalor and a touch of menace.
Anyboddy got anymore hates?
4. Mike
I have a total dislike of paying (or queueing) for parking - avoidance not evasion! I will walk half a mile from a free parking spot rather than feed a horrible meter. Result: Tesco, Homebase and all those nice out of town retailers with free parking, get my money and the town centre lot don't get my business, unless I can carry what I want on my bicycle!
Note! - Canterbury also have parking machines from Hades, which are very expensive, if you can fathom out the Minotaur's maze of one way streets to get to the car park in the first place!
5. David Pugh
I had exactly the same experience at a car park in Canterbury, and quite agree with the pettiness of councils.
So another city to avoid - when will local councils realise they will destroy their local economies by driving people away (excuse the pun!).
David Pugh.
6. BillK
You think Leicester's bad?
Try Croydon sometime!
Croydon council have had a vendetta against motorists for years.
High parking charges, clamping, tow-away, speed cameras, one-way systems, no entry, horrendous road signage where they try to combine everything at once (bus lanes, tram lanes, no entry, no right turn, no stopping, restricted hours, etc.). Everything is monitored by camera and you receive £100 fines in the post if they catch you breaking one of their regulations. The latest is cameras on yellow box junctions to fine you if you stop on one.
Croydon is a no-go area for motorists. And they wonder why shopping numbers are falling in Croydon?
7. anonymous
Peter, you are so right!
I met a machine like that in Gt. Yarmouth last year. It couldn't even accept reg nos in the format AANN AAA, despite it being a new machine and the number plates arriving some years ago!
Parking charges have to answer for.
The parking charges in Northampton TC must have done wonders for the Centre:MK just 20 miles away...
8. Simon
Right on ! I too avoid anywhere with stupid parking charges/systems as much as I possibly can.
Another vile trick is to make all the charges <something> and 50p - on the basis that you won't always have the 50p and the machine gives no change and so they can often get an extra 50p out of you.
9. Radical Meldrew
Surely a valid ticket entitles the purchaser the right to use a bay for whatever they wish during the time period that their ticket allows? If they want to give it away to another motorist why is this not allowed? This is perfectly reasonable because the bay has been paid for.
The real motivation is greed on behalf of the car park owners, so here's my theory:
Why do motorists have to guess beforehand how long they are likely to be parked? The excuse given is that it avoids having to employ someone to calculate the charges and avoids long queues leaving the facility.
Oh dear, in this case all they have achieved is to reverse the process and possibly deter new customers!
The real reason is that most people will purchase extra time to avoid potential problems. Each bay is now earning double revenue and the man that was confined to the exit barrier can now roam about issuing fines. Even more money!
Car park charges should be, without exception, just like mobile phones, with either PAYG or season ticket options.
Is there a car parking regulator? If not there should be.
10. Mark Aggleton
No real difference to the congestion charge machines in car parks in London then.....
11. anonymous
Do what I did - buy yourself motorcycle with plenty of storage and good protective gear and use it. Amuse yourself riding to work looking at the moronic motorists dozing bleary-eyed as they wait for the idiot at the front of the traffic queue to wake up to the fact that the lights have changed. Observe how many cars carry 1 person and figure out just how short the queue would be if everyone rode to work. Park free of charge in Motorcycle-only bays. Accept the vilification from motorists whose reactions have become dulled from the years of breathing the fumes - in short, do something about it, stop whingeing and enjoy your journeys to and from work.
12. anonymous
Respect? And neighbourliness? How does this fit with the government's agenda? Tiny little gestures to strangers, such as giving them a ticket you have already paid for, are to be outlawed. And then they will complain about how unfriendly everyone is. Next they'll be saying you may not flash your headlights to acknowledge the courtesy of another motorist.
John
13. Expat
In Canterbury it gets worse. I omitted to put in a pound for the night charge in a car park (mistakenly thinking it was free at that time of day). For the last year I have been hounded by a company claiming to represent the Canterbury Town Council. They want over 160 pounds and are threatening prosecution (for a pound's worth of mistake!).
Stay clear of Canterbury, a town supposedly welcoming tourists!
14. Alastair Warren
Sadly parking machines that require a registration number have been around for at least a decade. I came across one in Ramsgate, Kent in mid 90s.
I was distinctly unimpressed.
It's easy to see such stupid systems as part of the arsenal of levers to dissuade us from visiting City Centres.
Plymouth City Council is ruthlessly adhering the New Labour anti car doctrine. So I now no longer visit the City Centre unless I really have to. I can honestly say most of the times I parked in town during 2005 (free in the evening where I parked) was to take a visiting friend to his preferred Indian.
It's one more reason to consider emigration. It's much more Little Britain than Great Britain :(
15. Antony Norris
The London congestion charge system is just as bad, the website doesn't work on half the computers in the office, the phone system is long and laborious, the car park meters are ABC and the one time I tried it I wasn't sure it had worked even!
A website that automatically pays the congestion charge each time you enter the zone is in 'legal talks' with TFL because that would obviously stop the huge bounty of penalty charges that TFL thrive on!
And don't get me started on Croydon! Nearly as inaccessible as the North Pole. But one bit of good news is Croydon Council had to revoke an over zealous parking ticket they gave me. Wont be going back though!
16. David Fletcher
Not everywhere is this bad.
In praise of my home town Swindon, I can usually park for free in a side street for one or two hours within 5 minutes walk of the shops.
Failing that you drive into one of the multi-storey car parks and take a magnetic stripe ticket at the entry barrier and park. Before leaving you put the ticket in one of the pay machines, insert money for the time you have used, receive change, take the ticket which is returned, go back to your car and use the same ticket at the exit barrier.
If I want to collect a large item from one of the centre shops, I just take the car and trailer into town, drive up the helical ramp and over the top of the shops to the loading bay. Easy.
17. Andy Poulton
I first came across a parking meter requiring licence plate details in Bristol over 3 years ago - having not seen another one I had rather hoped the beasties had died a deserved death, I guess I was wrong.
On a slightly different tack, I saw a parking ticket machine in Hungerford, Berkshire) recently where one could by a ticket via reverse billing to a mobile phone. Sounds wonderful although my suspicion is that the registration process is nightmarish. I just dug thru the shrapnel in my pocket and fed the machine in the traditional way. Not the techie thing to do, but I was in a hurry.
18. Richard Peters
Canterbury is indeed a big problem. Car parks, when they are not full, all have the machines from hell and charge 24h per day. Oh and just to add insult to injury, street parking is via scratch cards which have to be purchased from local shops, most of which are inconvenient for motorists to use. I am not prepared to park up and play a game of Russian roulette with the traffic wardens. Do I find a shop and get back to the car before they do ? Too big a risk.
I shop out of town now and leave Canterbury to the tourists who are prepared to pay the exorbitant charges.
19. Jag Minhas
Car parks in the centre of Oxford use the same types of machine too. I experienced much the same as you - but in Oxford: big queue in the darkness at the car park - only difference was that the person helping the punters use the machine at the front of the queue was a "beggar" who was politely asking people if they could spare some change in return for the help!
20. Don Tregartha
In Milton Keynes, the city built for the car, the game is raised by having a myriad of schemes and tariffs, most of which are inadequately signed. The meters are pretty old tech but the enforcement isn't. Go over the limit, then your ticket is run up on the warden's pda along with the digital pictures of your ticket etc.
Word of warning, the meters all have a unique number printed on the ticket and if you move your vehicle a couple of blocks down the way to get nearer to where you need to be, they'll ticket you, even though you have stacks of time left.
I accept that in order to preserve access to the city centre, we have to pay and I have no sympathy for those who avoid paying altogether, but when you are penalised for falling foul of the 'parking cabal' then they will lose the support of the public.
21. Jerome Pearce
Having emigrated from 'Petty Britian' I sympathise. In Sydney most surrounding town centres have free parking for 2 or three hours in large car parks. Somethimes you have to 'endorse' your exit ticket with a local retailer, but that's OK. It really does encourage shoppers to use local shops.
As for the registration on your ticket, I agree, it is effectively doubling revenue by charging twice for the same ticket. My advice is to put in 'AAA 000' and claim you could not work it out if anyone tries to fine you. I imagine they would have a hard time forcing any fine in that case.