Whilst the days of scraping around for parking meter change may be over, so will be the days of finding easy, accessible spots around the city unless you own a mobile phone or carry a cashed up smart card.
Waverly Council hopes to have a working model of its cashless parking meter available for trial by December and is looking to convince 16 other local councils to accept the model as a standard.
The Council's smart card option, which requires a AU$5 deposit, will probably allow recharging in increments of AU$10, AU$20, AU$50 and AU$100. The mobile phone payment option - which requires the user to key a parking meter number into a mobile phone (at the cost of a call) and then charges the parking to a user's account -- may also incur a charge from the telecoms service provider.
-It may or may not be more convenient for you," Waverly Council's manager of parking services, Greg Briscoe-Hough, said, pointing out the 85 percent mobile phone penetration rate in Sydney.
However, Briscoe-Hough admitted that there was a -trade-off". If drivers don't own a mobile phone and don't want to buy a smart card they will be forced into often-inconvenient ticketed car parks, -leaving the streets alone" for those who are either aware of the system, can afford to, or chose to take advantage of it.
The system, which could be picked up Sydney-wide, will certainly inconvenience some consumers, Gale Kennedy of the Australian Consumers Association told ZDNet Australia.
-In effect it disenfranchises or distinguishes a difference between people who have mobile phones (or smart cards) and those who have cash in their pocket and want to park," she said. -In the case of emergencies [drivers] may not have the right tender to pay...it could be quite inconvenient," she added.
Whilst this move towards cashless parking meters could prove difficult for those with cash and who are unable to pay for services as well as the less affluent members of the public, Kennedy acknowledged that there could be greater costs for the community in terms of the maintenance of vandalised parking meters.
"There may be security reasons for this kind of prepaid option," she said.
Briscoe-Hough said that the costs associated with pilfered parking meters and the restoration of them, as well as the inconvenience to the community, is the prime reason for the Council's move to the cashless system.
-There are substantial savings in that regard," Briscoe-Hough said, adding that vandalised meters cost the Council in the vicinity of AU$300,000 per year.
Leichhardt Council splashed out AU$4.5 million dollars to install 400 tech-savvy, solar powered parking meters in May this year. Featuring the same SIM card technology that is found in mobile phones they also allow parking transactions to be billed to the user's account and send messages to drivers whose time is about to run out, asking them if they want to -top up" their parking meter payment.
The meters also accept smart cards and will be -cost-neutral" within the first year. -The money generated by them will pay for the implementation of them," council spokeswoman Anne Ferguson, told ZDNet Australia.
-When the Council decided it was going to install parking meters, it decided to go with the latest technology available," she said. However, unlike the Waverly meters, they're not totally cashless. -I think we're assuming that everyone out there has a mobile...that's not so," Ferguson added.
Ferguson said out of consideration for consumer convenience Leichhardt Council would not provide cash-free parking meters.
Waverly Council's Briscoe-Hough said the success of its mobile telephony scheme -depends on how greedy the telcos want to be" in charging for the service.
Don't forget the amount of times consumers do not have small change. My choice would the Leichhardt system with both coins and mobile phone option.