03 Apr 2024
Laura Bill has found somewhere to park her car, but paying for the privilege is far from easy…
Imagine this likely scenario: You want to leave your car for an hour to do something mundane like pick up some paracetamol from Boots or buy some mushrooms from the market.
You want to know when you get back that there will be no drastic repercussions. Your luxury trip to get some stir-fry ingredients should not end up costing you the same as a spa day. You could have of course just have cut out the middle-man and gone to Sopwell.
Where you could incidentally have parked totally for free.
After all, it’s parking. Surely by its very nature that means you leave it and go back to it… Just to check, I consulted the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary which confirmed: “The act of stopping a vehicle at a place and leaving it there for a period of time.” And an informal definition of parking is: “To leave (something) in a convenient place until required.”
Convenient! You don’t need an obstacle course to be able to go wherever you need to go every time you have to go by car. Is it a deliberate attempt to stop us using our cars? (That’s one for our conspiracy theorist readership) Is it a way for councils and businesses to just make even more money? Of course it is.
Why is everything so impossible these days for Joe and Jill Bloggs just trying to go about their already-probably-very-bloody-tiring-and-expensive life?
I’m talking about apps to park. Cash machines that are broken.
Anything that makes your ability to park, well…unable. And a myriad of other potential – preventable – parking problems which might arise on the streets of St Albans.
The ones where you just have to pay using an app that you don’t have? Problematic. You can’t download it. Maybe you’ve forgotten your password to download apps. Maybe you are running late and you don’t have time to set it all up. Maybe your phone battery is quite low. Maybe you have impaired sight.
Maybe you just aren’t overly brimming with patience and joy and you don’t have it in you today!! I genuinely have a solution to this.
It’s great for me but not necessarily convenient for my ‘solution’.
I call my friend. Who has alllllllllll the parking apps downloaded to his phone conveniently set up on his homescreen in a file named ‘parking’. I know right?
I have to call him from said app machine, hoping to absolute buggery that he isn’t having a poo, in a meeting or on the Underground. IF he answers I quickly state the number – IF I can find it on the machine – and he then puts in my car registration which is already logged on his app on his phone.
He asks how long I need to be. Then I pay him at some later stage. It works but is it by any means convenient? I think not.
What about the one where you have accidentally typed in the wrong car registration number? Maybe you have slightly swollen fingers. Maybe you have gloves on. Maybe the machine misheard you (if it’s voice activated).
So many things to think about. Are you now going to get a ticket even though you’ve paid? Should you take a photo of something so you can prove at a later date that it was you? Should you end up double-paying just to be certain that awful letter doesn’t land on the doormat? Aaaaarrrrgh. You only want to go for a doctor’s appointment for which you already had to spend two hours on the phone on hold.
How about visiting people in hospitals and hospices? You already feel flooded with fear about what might happen when you get there. But before you can be by their side you are having to stand in a car park in the rain, taking ages pressing one for this and two for that in a hospital car park. How long do you need? You might not have a clue whether your loved one will have a specialist visit their bed 10 minutes after you arrive and you’ll have to leave or if you will need to be there perhaps all night. How much should you pay?
How about when everything parking related is relying on a WiFi connection but your internet is sporadic?
Or the time you arrive at at pay-by-app parking spot but the different apps for different pay app car parks are confusing and you could end up downloading the wrong one.
Finally you’ve actually sorted the correct option – yay! You remembered your iPhone Apple Store password by going through all of your seven children’s names one by one but… you have to key in a number of a parking place that is on a sign or machine somewhere near your parking destination. You have to go on a treasure hunt to locate the number but the automated voice on the phone is getting frustrated and confused with waiting.
Karma, I guess.
Where my mum lives (Lincolnshire) you can drive virtually anywhere and just park. On a road. For free. Or in a car park and if there is a charge, it’s a pound or two and you just walk to the payment post that is a few yards from your car and pop in your pound and it’s all over. Get on with what you are actually there to do. Last time it happened, I looked at my mum in shock and said “Is that it? Have you done everything we need to do not to get a fine?” She didn’t understand.
So should we in St Albans have to go through this? Why????
Should we be worrying so much about being penalised for getting our parking wrong?
We asked the council what provision there is for people who don’t use apps or can’t access the internet while out. For people who don’t have a phone or who only use cash for transactions? What if there is a machine there but it’s broken?
A St Albans district council spokesperson said: “The council provides multiple options to allow residents to pay for their parking quickly and easily. At on-street parking bays and council-owned car parks, the cash machines (or cash and card machines in car parks) can be used alongside the increasingly popular PayByPhone app.
“Our machines are checked frequently. If one payment option happens not to be working, residents should use the other payment option provided. If they are not mobile phone users, they should use an alternative cash or card payment machine or move to alternative parking where their chosen form of payment can be made.
“Those with a Blue Badge, can park free for up to three hours, following the rules applied at the particular car park or on-street parking location.
“If someone is issued with a fixed penalty notice, they can appeal it they feel they have been treated unfairly – details can be found at: www.stalbans.gov.uk/penalty-charge-notices.”
The first part of their statement sounds to me like there is no provision for people who can’t access a mobile phone, should there not be a pay point or should that pay point be broken.
I have never heard anybody say: “You know what I really love to do after I’ve parked my car? I like to spend ages on the phone trying to register my vehicle, after I’ve downloaded an app, and then dance about in the street trying to find out what numbers to key in. And then being asked if the number I haven’t keyed in is the right one and having to correct it.”
So, I’m not sure where the council get the idea that this system is “increasingly popular”.
But:“If they are not mobile phone users, they should use an alternative cash or card payment machine or move to alternative parking where their chosen form of payment can be made” – well, I’m still unclear. Are they saying that if you cannot pay by phone then you can pay through a machine in a different car park? Or are they saying you should get back in your car and drive to another car park somewhere else?!
Perhaps I need to share my Oxford Learner dictionary definition with them because that surely is not a convenient suggestion is it?!
But then this gem: “If someone is issued with a fixed penalty notice, they can appeal it they feel they have been treated unfairly.”
Wouldn’t it be better, SADC, to prevent these situations in the first place – which you are most certainly not doing. By trying to save twenty grand a year – you’re making it EVEN HARDER for people who drive in this city.
Nobody needs a parking charge notice at the moment! And to appeal it means you run the risk of having to pay the higher amount. Just because you have squandered so much unnecessary cash, does not justify this. Plus – aren’t we trying to bring visitors to our city? Places like Watford are only up the road and have free parking for three hours.
ADDENDUM: Motorists using the online payment system for residents’ parking permits are not faring any better. Parking enforcement officers relying on the system to tell them who has a legitimate permit are obviously not getting the right information, as they are ticketing drivers who have paid regardless. This means they then have to appeal, jumping through hoops to do something which shouldn’t be an issue in the first place.
