Parking World

Night Follows Day

As predicted, by more than just myself, the problem of removing parking fees at NHS hospitals in Scotland and Wales is now raising its ugly head.

You may remember I said that they would have people screaming about the lack of parking within months of this change (blog date January 10). I was wrong - it actually began within days of the change. You can read about it in an article published on January 22, here.

Removing parking fees was just the dumbest thing they could have ever done, particularly as they didn't provide any extra parking facilities at the affected hospitals.

Now they have nursing staff, patients and visitors doing the rounds for extended periods of time fruitlessly searching for a vacant bay in which to park. Many are now being forced to park illegally on verges and in residential areas. This in turn is creating fines, damage and disgruntled residents.

Why? Because the carparks are now full of shop and office workers taking advantage of the hospitals free parking within a short distance of their jobs. Or, using them as park and ride facilities.

Will the government change its mind? I seriously doubt it, they probably think they will lose too many votes doing an about face on this one. The thing is, they are going to lose votes anyway, from those now disadvantaged by the change.

Will the government build more carparks? I doubt this also, as they are already hard pressed for cash due to the financial crises.

What's the answer? Firstly, England must not follow suit. As for Scotland and Wales, the best thing to do is reintroduce fees immediately, and also a graded permit system for patients, staff and visitors which provides discounts according to their level of need. Those in most need get the greatest level of access and discount. And interlopers get the biggest slug.

Simple really.

JP

Brits to be Told - Pay or Stay

Controversial new laws could mean that the Brits will have to clear up outstanding fines before they will be allowed to travel out of the  country in future.

Apparently the plan is to use the number plate recognition systems installed at the ports to flag vehicles with outstanding fines and prevent them from leaving until all debts are cleared.

With some 487 million pounds in outstanding fines, it could prove to be quite a rude shock for some looking forward to escaping the doldrums of the UK for some summer sun in Spain or such. You can read more about it here.

JP

Auto Parking

Automated parking systems really seem to be the flavour of the month at the moment. There have been articles about new installations quite regularly lately, and the latest I have come across is from the Philippines, where a 72 car facility has been constructed. You can read about it here.

Whilst these various systems promise a lot, I reckon they will still take some time to really get rolling with large installations.

Some of the big problems they have are their cost versus those of normal carpark construction, are the extra spaces enough of a benefit? 

Plus there is the parking and recovery times. Claims of retrieval times of under 2 minutes sound good and are probably fair under off-peak circumstances, but what about during peak demand times? For example, how do they cope when a crowd pours out of a cinema or concert?

I know security is good as there are no vandals or thieves wandering around sussing out likely targets, and systems such as finger print recognition makes incorrect retrieval extremely unlikely, but are these benefits going to convince the average Joe?

JP

Bicycle Parking

When I was little tacker and regularly caught the train on various outings, I remember seeing bike racks at most of the suburban rail stations. Obviously people would ride their bikes to the station, park them and the catch the train to the city or wherever they were heading to. And popular they were to.

Over the past few decades this trend had decreased as motorcars became cheaper, so over time the bike racks were removed. But the now the cycle is turning, or should that be re-turning! Bicycles have found a renewed life with the hike in oil prices, greenhouse gas fears, and the world economic crisis.

In various parts of world they have always been popular, particularly in India, Asia and South America. In Brasil they are so popular that co-operatives have been formed to provide secure parking for them - and guess what, some of the biggest are at rail stations.

The one in this article caters for more than 1700 bicycles a day, but that is nothing according to the 'feedback', some bike-parks in Holland cater for up to 5,000 bicycles.

This one, an hour or so outside Sao Paulo, charges around $5US per month for parking, which is reasonable for a low pay country.

As bicycles become more popular there is going to be a shortage of suitable parking, especially in office building situations, so perhaps there is a market in large cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland etc. for something similar. Maybe it could be set-up in carpark dead space, such as under an internal ramp? Perhaps showers, change rooms and lockers could be provided as part of an up-market variation. I could see a well run set-up charging something more like $5-10 per week for a secure lock-up such as this. Could be a nice little earner for someone brave enough to give it a go. 

Just a thought.

JP

Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

I had the pleasure of a trip to the US late last year for work, LA to be precise. It was my first trip OS and was great fun.

When I made my visit to the cash exchange centre to buy some US dollars, I was immediately struck by the lack of differentiation in the 'greenbacks'. Every denomination was virtually the same, the greatest difference being the faces of the Presidents gracing the front. And then my first purchase gave me some coin, and the largest one they have is the world renown 'Quarter'. 

Thinking on this now, it seems strange that a country that is always seen as one moving ahead has done nothing to alter its currency for ... I know not how long.

Here in Australia, we moved from pounds to dollars in 1966, with each denomination a different colour and size. Then a few decades later we introduced plastic bank notes. These have proved extremely difficult to counterfeit - something the paper US dollar always seems to have problems with.

As inflation has worked its demon ways, the introduction of the dollar coin and then the two dollar coin saw the removal of those pesky little bank notes. And this simple move proved a great boon to manufacturers and distributors of coin operated machines, be they for confectionery, chips, cigarettes, drinks, etc.

It also meant that parking meters and ticket machines were given a greater life span. They didn't need bank note recognition technology as soon as might otherwise have been the case.

This is not the case in the US, where the 'quarter' is still king in parking meters. Unfortunately it has proven to be a real problem for some city treasuries whose hands have been tied in regards parking fee increases. 

Lets say the city bosses decide that they need more cash from parking, and so double their current fees from $1.00 per hour to $2.00 per hour. This potentially doubles the number of coins going into the meters coin vault. Beauty! More cash flow.

Hang on, the meters now fill up twice as quickly, need to be emptied twice as often otherwise they will jam and nobody pays. Extra staff are now required to empty the machines, count, sort and bank the cash.

The alternative? Invest large amounts of money that they probably don't have at this time in the economic cycle to purchase new machines of some sort. Preferably ones that accept credit cards as well as bank notes. That's between a rock and a hard place.

Meanwhile, perhaps the US Treasury could look at replacing the 1 and 5 buck notes with coins? How about a $2 coin while their at it?

JP

Macquarie Bank and Parking

Australia's Macquaire bank is reportedly letting its parking operations in the US go back to its lenders. Read about it at PT's blog  Here. It also seems that they could be having problems in Europe, too. Check this out

The parking business has dodged much of the problems with the economic downturn, however those that focus on airports and have a lot of debt, could have some problems. My interview with Park 'N Fly's new president in May's PT noted that there had been some downward pressure on their occupancy rates, somewhere in the 10-15% range. Seems that if Macquarie couldn't handle that's small downturn, they must have been leveraged to the hilt.

JVH