90% of Parking Machine Measure Now Complete in Utrecht
Under the CIVITAS MIMOSA project, around 300 new state of the art parking machines have now been installed in Utrecht, bringing the total to 450, only 50 away from the target of 500 machines.
These new parking machines provide a much needed user friendly parking service for the 307,000 people living in Utrecht as well as the many city visitors. Car users to date have had to use their license plate number to get a ticket and pay with coins. With user friendly touch screen parking machines, users can now pay in real time or after parking by using mobile phone, smart card or credit card. Tiered parking rates are also available. For transport planners, the machine can also provide vital data for future travel planning. Furthermore, any software upgrades to the parking machines required can easily be added as the machines are linked a central mainframe. Innovative technical work carried out under CIVITAS MIMOSA allowed Utrecht to solve a number of technical challenges in implementing this measure. Technicians worked hard to find a way to keep personal & electronic payment information separate from the management information and ensure card readers on the machines could perform with rain soaked cards. Since it rains in Utrecht on a regular basis, this is a very good thing!
