July/Aug 2004

Anyone who has ever received a parking ticket - and who hasn't? - will sympathise with delivery drivers who fight a continuous and very frustrating battle with traffic wardens. TNT Express even had one driver who picked up £300 worth of fines in two hours: each time he stopped while delivering on London's Tottenham Court Road, kerbside cameras were activated, triggering another citation.

But this experience, which a TNT spokesman called "the straw that broke the camel's back", actually had a positive outcome, as local councils are now beginning a number of initiatives to improve the difficult loading and unloading conditions for drivers - and some of these rely on mobile technology.

Manchester, for example, is piloting Moovit, a system from a Scottish-based company of the same name, incorporating a sensor device inside the driver's window. The traffic warden pushes a button on the windscreen to send a pager signal to the driver warning him that his allotted loading time is about to run out and he had better return to the vehicle. Parcelforce Worldwide and Tesco have both tried it.

Inner London authorities such as Westminster and Camden are watching the pilot to see whether it is worth pursuing. However, it does have its drawbacks. "Moovit is one option," says Kevin Goad, head of parking at Westminster. "But the trial has only been going four weeks. If kids start pushing the buttons, it could cause more problems, as drivers will return to their vehicles once or twice but, when they realise it is a false alarm, not return next time - and possibly end up with a ticket."

 

Westminster has, however, programmed all of its parking attendants' Itronix Husky handhelds terminals data on with parking restrictions for every street in the borough. Wardens have to key in the exact location of the vehicle and the violation code, and the software will not let the warden issue a ticket for an invalid offence (which can happen if the warden put in the wrong code or is confused about which restrictions apply to the relevant location at the relevant time.

"It is very confusing," Goad admits. "No one understands a lot of the restrictions. Double yellow lines can mean different things in different places, depending on whether they have 'blips' (chevrons at right angles to the lines) and, if so, whether they have one blip or two. And on some streets (for example Soho's Brewer Street) different restrictions apply at different ends of the street."

Westminster and Camden parking representatives held a meeting in July with the main parcels companies to try to resolve the parking problems, said to have cost the industry over £3 million since the beginning of the year. They have agreed, among other things, to use mapping technology to identify ticketing "hot spots", so that the councils and the industry can try to discover why those areas generate more ticketing and find ways to reduce the number of fines.

Four London councils - Westminster, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Lambeth - are setting up a liaison group to meet bi-monthly with parcels carriers, local businesses and retailers to discuss issues facing drivers and councils, and an educational video is being made showing the problems each side encounter to try to resolve "flash points" between individuals. Marcia MacLeod