Pay by phone parking begins in Barnet

A cashless system to pay for parking spaces is beginning a six-month trial in the Barnet borough next week.

Drivers will be able to pay using their mobile phone under two separate schemes being piloted at the same time.

The initiative promises to make life easier for drivers, but has prompted fears it could leave motorists vulnerable to fraud.

The RingGo cashless system will be rolled out in eight of the boroughs off-street car parks, with the Verrus phone method being used in five other locations starting on Monday.

Barnet Council will be the first authority in the UK to test the two schemes simultaneously, with a view to rolling out one of them across the borough.

A council spokesman said the pilot would offer a safer, easier and more flexible payment method for motorists.

He claimed the schemes reduced the risk of theft at ticket machines and made drivers less of a target for robbers.

Motorists contact a call centre or automated system, registering the car for a particular location and time period, and then pay by credit or debt card.

The council spokesman added: Civil enforcement officers, who patrol the car parks, will be equipped with equipment to monitor which cars have purchased cashless parking and when their time will run out, in the same way they currently monitor the times on pay and display tickets.

Metric Group

In April 2007 Metric Group and Cobalt Telephone Technologies, owners of the RingGo brand, had announced a commercial understanding to offer parking authorities a suite of parking solutions that integrates Pay & Display machines and a mobile phone-based means of payment.

Joachim Oehmen, Managing Director of the Metric Group, said, "This partnership will allow a parking manager to implement phone parking with confidence with the added bonus of having a single source audit facility via our ASLAN networked central management system."