A Burnaby-based parking meter manufacturer is launching a new licence-plate activated payment system where enforcement officials electronically scan licence plates in order to catch offending vehicle owners.
Digital Payment Technologies Corp. (DPT) said in a release Tuesday that, with the licence plate as the key identifier in the system, municipalities could do away with marked street spaces and gain additional revenue by accommodating more vehicles within existing curb space.
The system includes hand-held and vehicle-mounted licence plate scanners that match scanned plates to a database of plate numbers with paid parking sessions. If a scanned plate is not found in the database, the system automatically generates a citation.
DPT said that operators could see as much as a 20-fold improvement in their parking-enforcement productivity by increasing the coverage area of enforcement personnel, reducing costs and increasing revenue.
The system captures additional revenue by eliminating the “pass back” of unexpired parking permits from one parker to another.
As well, parking operators can use the system to offer premium services such as licence-plate enabled valet parking, gateless parking, loyalty programs and reserved parking based on the licence plate.
The company said that most of its existing pay stations could be upgraded to the system with a keypad and software update.
With the system, parkers do not need to remember a space number or return to their cars to place a receipt. They just enter their licence plate number at the pay station.
Another B.C. company – Vancouver’s Photo Violation Technologies – has launched a parking meter system also based on licence-plate activated technology.
But that company’s progress has been slowed drastically – the company no longer has a website – by disgruntled investors and related lawsuits (See “Photo Violation Technologies Corp. granted judgment for costs” – issue 997; December 2-8, 2008).