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London’s priciest car park ‘charges £43 for six hours’

July 16, 2008

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Parking in the capital’s most expensive car park will set you back £43 for a six-hour stay, a London newspaper said Monday.

The multi-storey car park on Pavilion Road in Knightsbridge has been named London’s costliest by the Evening Standard. Located walking distance from luxury department store Harrods, the NCP-run facility charges drivers £7.20 an hour.

The paper said the highest hourly rate could be found at the NCP in Berners Street, Bloomsbury, which charges £8 per hour but a mere £33 for six hours.

The survey found that people driving into the capital for a day of shopping are better off parking at the Masterpark on Oxford Street where charges are £5 an hour or £24.50 for six hours.

AA president Edmund King told the Evening Standard the charges were “mind-boggling”, adding that they keep many shoppers out of central London.

Bargain hunters unwilling to walk, cycle or take the Tube or bus, should head for the City of London area car parks, the paper said, with parking at Spitalfields and Smithfield Market a steal at £2 an hour.

Source:   http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9Q36wTrSbBSwq9jMKc3iJQt1LQQ

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Japanese Parking Lots Accept Contactless Payment

July 12, 2008

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Japanese parking lot operators are beginning to accept contactless payments as card issuers continue to try to make inroads in Japan’s cash-based consumer economy. More and more pay-by-hour lots are accepting payment via contactless cards or mobile phones equipped with contactless chips, according to the Nikkei news service. Nippon Parking Development Co., which runs about 100 lots in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, will accept iD, the contactless credit brand launched by mobile network operator NTT DoCoMo and credit card company Sumitomo Mitsui, the Nikkei report says. Another parking-lot operator, Park 24 Co., accepts three contactless electronic purses: Edy, Suica e-money and PiTaPa. The latter two e-purses are mainly used to cover transit fares in and around Tokyo and Osaka, respectively. Overall, Japanese consumers make more than 90% of their purchases in cash, according to DoCoMo estimates. To capture a piece of this market, card issuers are supporting a total of five major brands of contactless credit and electronic-cash programs, with more on the way. Consumers can make contactless payments at thousands of convenience stores and other merchant locations, but few of the card-reading terminals are interoperable, which threatens to confuse consumers. Masao Nakamura, president of DoCoMo, told the Nikkei Marketing Journal this week that his company is now working on a contactless point-of-sale terminal that can accept all three brands of contactless credit in Japan.

Source:  http://www.n-p-d.co.jp/en/index.html

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Networked Parking System Alerts Drivers to Free Spots

July 12, 2008

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New technologies promise to revolutionize the hunt for a parking spot in big cities like San Francisco. Donald Shoup is along for the ride.

“This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

Solving the parking mess takes on special significance in San Francisco because two years ago a 19-year-old, Boris Albinder, was stabbed to death during a fight over a parking space.

“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,” said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose work on the pricing of parking spaces and whether more spaces are good for cities has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.”