Paying for car parking

Paying by cash enables people to be free and private and denying individuals this right is another step in the direction of an Orwellian, authoritarian society.

How does France and Spain manage their car parking which is frequently free ?

I live in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Ely March and Chatteris all have free parking. Park and ride into Cambridge is small for parking and I use my pass for bus.

Our county council has an app that works over the whole county (Wiltshire) to pay for parking so no need for cards. A lot of car parks now have pay by app or pay by text. Much simpler and no risk of a ticket if you don't have change. I did come back to my car once and find a warden standing by it with his machine - he thought I hadn't paid and was waiting for the machine to get a signal to check! Luckily I'd just had the reminder text (20p extra!) so could show him!

I go to the car park in town where you pay when you come back to your car, only paying for the time used. I like using coins because I can empty my purse of all the small five pence coins.

PamelaJ1 it sounds like your service provider doesn't trust the site.
My advice to you is in future turn off your Wi-Fi on your phone before you try logging in/on to the app and making a payment.
Good luck

Just looked into buying an annual Car Park pass for Windsor Great Park. (Christmas present for DD!) If her husband drives rather than she, they are supposed to have another pass! At £70 a year, this seems more than unreasonable. Or am I just mean?

Over 65's in our area can pay £30 for the year and get up to 3 hours parking free in most car parks in our small town and neighbouring larger one - you get a disc and clock a bit like the disabled badge holder one. If you wish to stay more than 3 hours you can pay the difference. However at our local railway station the car park ticket machines are so complicated you can miss a train whilst trying to pay!

We are fortunate to have free parking in our three local towns and out of town shopping centres. I won't shop anywhere that charges for parking. I feel that with the decline of town centres, the council's should make the shopping experience easier and more welcoming, instead of more difficult and expensive.

If you own a car you have a card. But save us from those demands to pay by phone. Our PAYG phones cannot take it.

Or try real money!

Yes, much prefer cash to pay for parking.

Seen far too many people who have had problems sorting out machines that won’t take the card details etc.

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,
And make the machines vandal proof.

The way to vandal-proof ticket machines is to exclude the use of cash.

One of our car parks in town had a number recognition system. We could either pay on our way out or, register car numbers with the council and open an account. At the end of the month, the charges were taken out by Direct Debit.
I found it very useful, particularly as this is the car park next to the theatre. Getting out after a show means long queues at the machines while numbers are tapped in and payment made. However, it had to be changed as, apparently, the system goes against some regulation. (GDPR perhaps?).
Now, people start leaving the theatre before the end of the show to avoid the queues.

Difficult to vandal proof when you think that robbers take chain saws to ATMs! I read some countries are going cashless!

NanKate - we may live in the same district. I am unhappy about using a credit or debit card to pay for parking and have so far resisted. I do not know how secure the system is given how easy it has been to vandalise similar machines. I was relieved when visiting a neighbouring town (different council) to find they still have the 'old fashioned' type of machine where you puts in your money and out comes a ticket - not digitalised in any way and lo and behold these machines do not get vandalised - steel bar across the cash box.

We have a cc machine at our local railway station. I have tried to use it many times, going through all the instructions, but I now use the car park next door which is cash only. Don't know what I'm doing wrong but it's do frustrating. Grrr.

I no longer go into town in my car - too expensive to park, and I keep worrying about getting back in time. Now, I take the Park & Ride bus (which runs every 10 minutes). Much cheaper, and I don't have to worry about parking.

At the cottage we stay at in the beautiful New Forest they leave a parking disc for us to use during our stay, which saves us quite a bit.

That is a brilliant idea MacCavity2 why can't other areas do that.

Here in the New Forest we can buy a yearly parking clock for £25 it allows 3hours free parking in all the New Forest car parks. Very convenient and it can be used in any car.

Well I’ve just tried to pay online(see earlier comment) and guess what. I haven’t managed it?.
I put in all my details and then all my card details but then got a message saying th3 site wasn’t secure.
I have received an email welcoming me to the site but no evidence of payment.
After phoning , a bit of a struggle, I got a reasonably pleasant girl who couldn’t find any of my details. So now I’ll have to check my bank statement.
It used to be so easy. Turn up, pay and go.

I agree with the standardisation thing MOnica on a recent visit to the UK I found it all a bit confusing.
We are lucky here in rural France there are no car parking charges apart from those in cities. I have quite got out of the habit of paying to park.

Our local authority and its neighbour all give one or two hours free parking. A town further away has free parking, 24/7. That is why I go there when I want to buy clothes or do Christmas shopping - possibly even have lunch.

What I wish they would do is standardise the operation of these car number machines. At my local carpark, you just key the number in (with numbers and letters vertical rows), press the button and get the ticket. In the nearby town, where I go once week, you have to press the green button before you put the number in and the letters and numbers are in horizontal rows, not vertical, I usually forget to press the button and have to start again.

Do not start me on the colours used on the alphanumeric keys.

I prefer to pay with coins.
I hate everything being done by machine.

We have the dreaded “Evil Eye” in our town NanKate ( otherwise known as Parking Eye) . They are in car parks , hospitals and even our supermarkets ! Their motto is fine, fine, fine ! Mind you the ( labour controlled) LA get a decent cut of the spoils so it will suit them.