Hospital installs ticketless parking system in a bid to tackle congestion problems

A NEW system has been brought in at the UHCW car park - meaning you won’t need a ticket.

The car park is the centre of many patients, staff and residents’ woes as it gets to full capacity quick after visiting times start.

However a new system is now in use to try and cope with the volumes of visitors and staff parking there.

There were some teething problems during to crossover, however.

One resident got in touch with the Telegraph to say traffic was chaos after Christmas for several weeks.

He said: “Normally the traffic is bad but since Christmas the queues have been building along Ansty Road and Clifford Bridge Road.

“There has definitely been some changes going on.

“It seems the exit barrier had been up for a length of time, meaning more staff and patients are queuing to get into spaces that aren’t empty. “It has been causing chaos. “I don’t know what they’ve been playing at but it hasn’t worked.

“I’d rather the staff didn’t pay at all for parking but the barrier being up has caused problems all round.”

University Hospital Coventry confirmed that not only was work ongoing to install new automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems for the parking but parking was free for a period of time.

A spokesman said: “While the installation of the system was being finalised, to attempt to minimise the impact on patients, our car parks were free of charge for a short period, this led to an increase in traffic on the hospital site during this time. “While this work has been ongoing we have been trying to reduce the impact this has had on visitors and the surrounding areas as much as possible.”

The car park at UHCW is now ticketless.

UHCW has said this gives people more options to pay for the parking, as well as reducing flow of traffic on site.

A spokesman added: “Our service provider has recently updated our car parks with an ANPR system which gives visitors more options to pay for their parking and is designed to make the flow of traffic on the hospital site more efficient and ease parking congestion.

“Installation of the ANPR system is now complete and we are seeing an improvement in the flow of traffic onto and off of the hospital site.”

Car parks will no longer issue tickets at barriers and will instead read your number plate as you enter.

Find a parking space within the marked bays; do not park on pavements or verges.

Make sure you know the correct registration of your vehicle, if you are unsure take a photo or write it down; you need to enter your registration to pay for your parking.

Pay at one of the new payment machines before you exit the car park.

Enter your full, vehicle registration in order to pay. You can pay by cash, card and contactless at the payment machines. You can also pay using the PAYBYPHONE mobile app. Payments can also be made after you have left the site before midnight the same day.

Visit www.paybyphone.co.uk, text REG and your registration to 65565 or call 0330 4007275 and follow the instructions.