Westminster drives forward parking strategy to go cashless in 18 months (16/05/2007)

An influential council committee last night agreed a strategy to implement cashless parking and the removal of parking meters and pay and display machines in the heart of London by the end of 2008.

Since the end of last year, the Westminster City Council has been losing over £100K per week through thefts on its parking meters. Although the council has temporarily abated these losses by introducing new locks, there is already evidence that thieves are reverse-manufacturing new keys.

Councillor Brian Connell, Chairman of the Built Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee said:

“Based on the evidence we heard last night, there are compelling customer benefits - as well as a strong financial case - for the council to introduce a cashless parking strategy city-wide and remove all parking meters within the next 18 months.

“The success of the Pay by Phone trial, in terms of take up and customer satisfaction, has shown that removing parking meters would be a popular decision. With the rising cost of collecting cash from meters and the issue of theft, the business case for the council to make such a decision is just as compelling.

“There are also additional ‘green’ benefits from introducing a cashless parking system by removing the emissions from the collection vehicles.

“We therefore would have no objections in rolling out Pay by Phone parking across Westminster from October as an alternative method of payment."

Notes to editors:

A final business case and Cabinet report will now be developed as the strategy has been agreed. This is likely to be sometime in June.

This is being done in conjunction with Partnership in Parking so if a decision is taken, this may also be rolled-out to other London boroughs under the same joint procurement contract.

Further background details can be found below:

The Parking Services Team have managed several new technology pilots and initiatives that have contributed to our understanding of customer parking payment behaviours and the ability of different technologies to deliver, these include:

Magnetic stripe credit card trial

New equipment suppliers development trial (Partnerships in Parking)

Pay by phone pilot Motorcycle parking research and strategy

The council provide 8,000 kerbside parking spaces for casual use. The charges for using this casual parking space are determined by the average occupancy (demand) in specific areas.

Charging for the use of casual parking is controlled in the following way:

Parking Meters - 3710 spaces

Pay & Display - 3850 spaces (697 machines)

Dedicated Pay By Phone parking - 440 spaces

The majority of the above parking equipment currently installed on street is ageing, in poor condition, does not provide the management information required in order to properly gauge motorists’ parking behaviour and is subject to increasing levels of cash theft.

The results of the Pay by Phone pilot at the end of March 2007 are:

Take-up Excellent – 65% of revenue in Covent Garden and Soho is from phone. The 100,000th transaction occurred in the 2nd week of March.

Customer Feedback From the March 07 Customer Survey:

Once registered, 82% of respondents found it easy to use the system with over 50% finding it “Very Easy” and less than 5% finding it “Very Difficult”. 61% of users state that they will always use Pay by Phone where it’s available and a further 20% state they will use it most of the time.

Parking Attendant Feedback From the March 07 Parking Attendants (PAs) Survey: 53% of PAs feel that Pay by Phone has made enforcement easier and one of the main perceived benefits of the new system is that it is easier to spot non-payment / overstay vehicles. This helps with our intelligent deployment approach to enforcement overall. The most popular enforcement benefit stated by the PAs is the additional supporting evidence that Pay By Phone provides for parking tickets – showing increased PA confidence in the tickets that they issue.

Call Centre Staff Feedback Vertex Call Centre Staff in Dingwall are handling over 800 new telephone registrations a week for the Pay By Phone system, plus around 700 enquiry calls. These calls are being successfully handled within agreed service levels and staff in Dingwall are also successfully dealing with the few complaints and applications for refunds. Effect on revenue in Covent Garden and Soho has increased over previous projections. This is thought to be at least partially due to the elimination of theft of cash from meters since their removal.

Parking ticket issue rates

No noticeable effect on issue rates of parking tickets.

Complaints

The contact centre have received a few complaints regarding the system, mainly due to customers getting used to the new technology – these are running at less than 0.3% of transactions.

Refunds and chargebacks

During the entire 6-month pilot there were 65 requests for refunds and 2 chargebacks.