Elderly struggle with Hastings' new paperless parking meters

The new electric parking systems replaced the old lollipop coin meters. Photo / Warren Buckland

New paperless parking meters in Hastings CBD are causing trouble for the elderly.

The 74 new pay-by-plate parking meters were installed just over two weeks ago at a cost of $540,000.

An Age Concern Hawke's Bay spokeswoman said when she asked a group of 20 elderly people "half of them said it was awful or dreadful".

She said one concern for this group was having to enter car registration numbers, which can be tricky to remember.

Members of the group also felt the instructions were both hard to read and understand, she said.

Screens can be difficult to see, and they were unsure where the parking time shows up on the screen.

Often without pen and paper, people would have to keep going back to their car for the number.

One person said they "need people at the carparks training us to use them".

Locations of the new parking meters. Red and blue are east and west meters and green are off street car parks. Photo / Hastings District Council

One asked "why do we need to do this?" while another simply described them as "crap", she said.

The meters were replaced because the previous lollipop meters, which were about 23 years old, were starting to fail.

The new meters take coins, paywave, and the Paymate app.

Each meter services about 8-10 parking spaces and 508 lollipop meters were removed.

"As expected, when introducing a new initiative, [the] feedback has been mixed across all age groups as people get used to the new technology," Hastings District Council regulatory solutions manager John Payne said.

"These meters are being used throughout New Zealand with success and we have every confidence that will be the case, for both younger and older people, in Hastings as well once people get used to them," Payne said.

"It's a learning process for everyone and [Hastings District] council has sought to make the transition as smooth as possible.

"Our City Assist and parking warden teams continue to make themselves available to help people use the machines and follow the on-screen instructions," Payne said.

Coin payments can still use 10c as a minimum whereas card payments are a minimum of 50c for half an hour. Prices were not increased when machines changed over.