T he cashless car park

Sagoss has created an ANPR-enabled, coin-free pay-on-foot solution in a

Cllr Phil Filmer, Medway Council’s portfolio holder for frontline services, said: “Since the pandemic, there has been a reduction in the number of people who pay for their parking using cash. Since January 2022, only 1.7% of motorists who use this popular car park have paid for their parking using cash. There are a number of ways that motorists will be able to pay for their parking including using their phones and setting up an online parking account. Following a successful ANPR pilot at the Rochester multi-storey car park, we introduced cashless parking in November 2022.”

How the system works

The exit management kiosk automatically presents the driver with their parking fee. As the car park is paperless, receipts can be downloaded as a PDF via a QR code. The ANPR cameras automatically raise the barrier as motorists exit.

People can sign up for an online parking account and AutoPay option, which will record when a registered vehicle enters and leaves the car park and automatically bills the account holder’s payment account without the need to go over to the kiosks. Drivers register for the autopayment account via a council branded portal hosted by Sagoss. Drivers can also purchase season tickets online via the council’s parking website. The season ticket service is hosted on a Sagoss back office service called BlinkEnterprise.

Looking ahead

The coin and card payment kiosks removed from Rochester Riverside have been redeployed in other car parks where new Sagoss systems have also been introduced. Residents with electric, or hybrid, vehicles are able to park in the car park for free between 6pm and 8am Monday to Sunday, if they are charging their vehicles using the available EV charging points. To benefit from free parking, residents have to register their vehicle online to give them ticketless access. Motorists need to pay to charge their vehicles.

Richard Parsons, Sagoss’ national sales manager, said: “Because of the high reliability of the Sagoss system and its customer support features, the council has discovered that the car park requires very little support or attendance. With the Sagoss system, it is possible for the ‘support officer’ to remotely manage the kiosk in full. The support officer can input the drivers’ VRM, select the driver’s vehicle and generate a receipt, if needed. The driver only needs to use their credit/debit card as everything else, as regards the payment process, can be managed by the officer.”

The Sagoss system included an ITSME exit management kiosk. Parsons explained: “If the driver had failed to pay for the parking at one of the payment kiosks, then the ITSME will present the VRM of the driver’s vehicle when they arrive at the exit lane, advise the driver of their parking fee, and accept payment via a credit or debit card.”

Sagoss will be showing its suite of products at Parkex 2023 on stand P210.