Parking officers have fines in hand Author: Emma Connors Date: 01/08/2005 Publication: The Financial Review
There will be less chance of arguing your way out of a parking ticket as NSW councils join other states that have issued parking officers with hand-held computers.
NSW Treasury's infringement processing bureau has selected four companies to provide devices. Councils will now negotiate their own contracts with the four suppliers favoured by the bureau.
The favoured four are DCA, Reino International, TTM and Fujitsu Australia. Most NSW councils are expected to introduce the new equipment, including mobile printers, in the next 12 months.
Printed tickets will be left on vehicles and data from the mobile devices will uploaded and processed by the bureau's infringement management processing system.
The bureau expects the devices to remove problems caused by unreadable handwritten parking tickets and to enhance the integrity of infringement and fine enforcement processes.
That has been the experience of the City of Melbourne. A spokesman said the hand-held computers in use there since 1992 had tightened the system.
Brisbane City Council has also automated the issuing of tickets and is considering other wireless solutions for parking payment.
But while there is general agreement that hand-held computers have been a success, councils report mixed experiences when it comes to mobile parking payment options.
Some Sydney councils still allow drivers to ring up parking charges on their mobile phones but in Melbourne a brief foray into this technology was abandoned.
"The whole idea of limited parking is that people come back to their cars within the hour and move on
"When they could use their mobile to pay, we found people parking, going into their office, making a call every hour, and leaving their car in the one spot all day long," a spokesman said.
The NSW infringement processing bureau was transferred from the NSW Police to Treasury's Office of State Revenue two years ago after a planned software upgrade went embarrassingly awry.
The bungled development of the infringement management processing system cost the state up to $41 million in lost revenue. It also prompted a $9.6 million compensation payment to local councils, according to a Public Accounts Committee report.