New parking machines to appear around town this month

Rotorua's new parking machines will start popping up in selected streets around town this month as part of a phased transition to modernise and improve inner city parking in Rotorua.

Rotorua Lakes Council partnered with service provider i-Park in May this year as a way to modernise obsolete parking equipment and address the increased operating costs and declining revenue.

Rotorua Lakes Council's community compliance team leader Kurt Williams said the council wanted to make the transition to the new parking system as easy as possible.

"We've set up a demo parking machine that will operate in the same way as the new machines that people will start to see over the next few months in Rotorua's inner city.

"If you're feeling unsure about the new parking machines, I encourage you to come in and give our demo machine a go and discover first hand just how user friendly they are. Our team in the customer centre will be available to give you a hand if you need it," he said.

The public can have a practice run using the new machines at the demo machine set up in the customer centre at Rotorua Lakes Council on Haupapa St.

The new machines will take credit card and debit card payments and about half of the new machines will also take coins.

On one side of the street there will be a machine that doesn't accept coins and on the other side there will be one that does accept coins. A key feature of the new machines is that after paying for your parking, you do not need to return to your vehicle to place a ticket on your dashboard.

At the demo machine you can practice using your own credit and debit cards without a fee being charged. If you would like to practice using coins in the demo machine, your coins will be donated to the Mayoral Manaakitanga Relief Fund as the council are not able to easily access the coins from the machine and return them to you then and there.

The free P60 parking in the vicinity of Tutanekai St will be unaffected. There were no plans to change parking fees as part of this process.