NEW PARKING METER SYSTEM PLANNED

Metro hopes to raise more cash with mobile method used by other cities

THE Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality wants to reintroduce the mobile parking management system to replace all the old parking meters. This, it hopes, will bring in more revenue from its 662 metered parking bays.

The municipality is set to get the ball rolling on the project once the council approves the proposal on Thursday next week, after a feasibility study.

The mayoral committee member in charge of safety and security, councillor John Best, said it hoped to advertise a tender for the project by September.

At a mayoral committee meeting yesterday, Best said the municipality was making only 12c per parking meter every day.

A report also revealed the municipality had collected only R21 000 through parking meters for the 2016-17 financial year.

The report sought to transfer the function, and establish a new model for meters, from under the auspices of the Mandela Bay Development Agency to the safety and security department.

“This has been investigated from 2009. The reality is that out of the 662 parking meters we have in this city, we are making 12c a day [per meter],” Best said.

“We are asking now to place the management of the parking meters under the control of safety and security.

“We have gone and looked at Cape Town and Hermanus and they are making a lot of money out of parking meters and that is a process that we want to start.”

In the report, safety and security executive director Keith Meyer reported that existing parking meters were outdated and could not be maintained as they were no longer being manufactured.

Meyer wrote that the meters could not be adjusted with annual increases.

“The only available parking management solutions are mobile handheld solutions,” he said.

“All other metros [City of Joburg, City of Cape Town, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni] have already, or are in the process, of moving over to the latest mobile parking management solutions.”

This will be the municipality’s second attempt at using handheld devices to monitor parking bays.

Meyer said the project had failed in 2010 due to non-compliance from the municipality and the service provider.

Best said officials would first deploy people with handheld devices where there were existing parking meters in Central, Uitenhage, Despatch and Newton Park.

They would also investigate where else to deploy people to monitor parking.

Mayor Athol Trollip said the project would create jobs.

“Existing old-fashioned and outdated parking meters aren’t yielding the revenue that they should [as] they have been ignored,” he said. “Safety and security wants to have the responsibility and consider new parking management systems that are probably aligned to modern handheld systems where people are employed to control parking in certain areas.

“This means they would monitor cars that arrive and depart with a hand-held device that will measure the time and give you an amount that you will have to pay on the spot.”