Pay for Car Parking via SMS Text.

Posted by Fox on July 17, 2007 at 11:44 AM

Westminster Council in London is paving the way, and other local authorities across the country are watching with interest.

The council is scrapping coin-fed machines in the capital’s West End in exchange for a cashless system. It will make searching for loose change at the roadside a thing of the past, with motorists paying via mobile phone.

Westminster is axing the traditional meters after a successful six-month trial, plus a poll of drivers which found three-quarters would rather pay by phone.

To use the new system, motorists have to first set up a parking account, which can then be debited by SMS text alerts sent from their mobiles. These would include registration num­bers and the parking bay reference, marked on signs on the street. That information is then automatically sent straight to wardens’ hand-held units, so they can check if owners have paid. A traffic light display on these devices sees number plates of cars with time left highlighted in green, with those which have expired shown in red.

Motorists can even make top-up payments if they need to extend their stay in the space. Council bosses say text reminders will be sent a few min­utes before a driver’s time runs out.

All 3,700 of Westminster’s meters will be replaced with the cashless sys­tem, or the authority’s latest chip and pin units, by the end of next year.

Removing coin-fed machines from the roadside is expected to eliminate theft and vandalism. However, the chip and pin meters could still be open to fraud – especially ‘skimming’, where the data from a card’s magnetic strip is electronically copied on to another.

A Westminster spokesman told AutoExpress magazine: “Small cameras can be installed to monitor these machines if we suspect that they are being targeted.”

Source : autoexpress.co.uk