The busy summer holiday period has once again shone a spotlight on one of the great bugbears of travellers and locals alike – particularly in popular coastal communities – the difficulty in finding a place to park!
While many places now have time limits on spots in order to encourage a flow of visitors and to prevent overnight parking by would-be campers, ensuring compliance has long been a problem for councils.
However, the march of technology seems set to slowly make the need for parking enforcement rangers to endlessly drive around marking tyres with chalk totally redundant.
In New South Wales, more than 20 councils – including City of Sydney, Sutherland Shire and Bayside Councils – are currently utilised new camera technology that allows compliance officers to electronically monitor timed parking zones.
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And now, Wollongong City Council, has become the latest to embark on a 12-month trial of the technology which it says will ensure fair public access to parking hotspots around the city.
The electronic monitoring system captures license plate data via in-vehicle cameras, allowing officers to patrol timed areas more widely and efficiently than the current manual practice of chalking tyres.
“We all know parking is a hot-button issue and we’ve seen that again through the Christmas-New Year period,” Lord Mayor of Wollongong Councillor Tania Brown said. “We’ve heard from many residents and business owners in our community that people overstaying in timed parking zones is a major source of frustration, particularly in the locations where we’ll be trialling the technology.”
The mayor said that timed parking zones played a vital role in ensuring efficient and fair access to parking in those high-demand locations like the city centre.
“There are around 7,700 parking spaces in our city centre available for public use and convenient, time-restricted parking near retail areas supports high turnover, helping shoppers park, shop and free up space for the next person,” Cr Brown said. “While it is just a trial at this stage, if it can provide more consistent and efficient monitoring of parking zones, and allow our staff to do their jobs safely and effectively, it’s certainly something we should be looking at.”
The council said that, where possible, fines or notifications issued via the electronic management system will continue to be issued in paper form and placed on the offending vehicles.
While the trial will capture valuable data regarding driver behaviour and use of timed parking zones, it does not include or propose changes to currently signposted time limits.
The monitoring uses face-blurring technology and will not capture any personal identifiers other than vehicle licence plate numbers.
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I hope this technology comes to our town.
For the past 10 days we’ve had two motor homes parked nose to tail in a four hour limit parking area near our Port Philip Bay boat ramp.
And have you advised your local council or just whinged?
What is the real issue here? Perhaps it’s the unreasonable prices caravan parks are charging?
There should be a national caravan park registry, they should be rated and prices should be fixed to their rating i.e. if they;re sub-standard they can only charge a low price. Then perhaps, less people will try parking and campint elsewhere.
Most caravan parks are standard business enterprises and properly charge as the owners see fit. If you disagree with the charge/s , vote with your wallet and go elsewhere. If you feel the need to be on top of the pile at the favoured beach site, just pay the fee and shutup. Personally, we go elsewhere and find the nicer , cleaner and peaceful spots all over this marvellous country. Done this for the last 21 years and intend to do so until it’s physically too difficult.
What you are proposing is almost like us being in a Communist State.
When you drive down a street and there’s huge houses with double garages and see the whole street blocked with cars. So what’s the problem?
School holidays and over priced caravan parks…. What’s the problem?
Councils wanting more money…..What’s the problem?
Garbage just dropped in the streets because there’s no bins. There are solutions to the problem.
If all Councils put in an area with 72 hr parking or longer term parking there wouldn’t be a problem. People in motorhomes and campervans need somewhere to overnight camp. Caravan Parks are too expensive.
So you only want to FREE CAMP in TOWNS ETC, I say go out bush & find somewhere to camp, if you want Coinvent Council run Facilities then these have to be kept Clean & Maintained
Agree. We only free camp, and always camp well outside of towns, in the bush. That way, we bother no-one and the next day, we can drive into town, spend our dollars and support the community. If we need to do a caravan park thing occasionally, we just suck up the cost.
Yes all very Good but how does this effect the position of a Driver / Driver= for a Disabled person, where they display the DFISABLED STICKER in the Windscreen of the Vehicle and as is the case in Wollongong City NSW in certain TIMED PARKING LOCATIONS, one can park all day, if displaying the Disabled Sticker.
Why should you be able to park all day in a 2 hour parking spot just because you have a disabled sticker. It just makes a rort of the whole disabled parking system