Parking tickets wrongly issued

Rotorua drivers such as Siobhan Foster have been wrongly fined for breaking parking rules. Photo / Ben Fraser

Rotorua drivers have been incorrectly fined for breaking parking rules in the inner city.

It has emerged a number of drivers had been wrongly issued with overstaying fines since the installation of 1551 in-ground sensors in December 2013 when the time-limited parking trial began.

Rotorua Lakes Council chief operating officer Dave Foster said the local authority did not keep a record of exactly how many times this had happened but that such fines were being challenged and cancelled at a rate of about two per week.

It does not take into account incorrect tickets that drivers may have paid unnecessarily.

The council issued a total of 15,963 parking infringement notices during the 2014/15 financial year, Mr Foster said.

Local resident Siobhan Foster said she was incorrectly issued a ticket in November 2014 after parking in the CBD for less than the then two-hour limit.

It took an email to the council from her friend, proving that she was not in the CBD at the time she was supposed to have originally parked, to have the $15 fine waived, she said.

She said the experience had made her wary of going into parking spaces too quickly after other cars.

"What do you do if you can't prove you weren't there?"

Mr Foster said incorrect fines were a result of technical issues with the sensors.

"This has occurred on occasions where the sensors - often due to low batteries or damage - have not immediately re-set when a car leaves a park and another car enters straight away.

"The average life of the batteries used in the sensors is three years.

"There are sometimes also issues caused by damage and weather conditions. All issues are tended to by Smart Parking, which is contracted for the upkeep, maintenance and data management of the sensors, including software and technology updates."

He said there had been no issues caused by geothermal activity.

His comments followed those made at a recent council committee meeting by Stavros Michael, the council's transport solutions director, that the sensors can take about three minutes to reset between each park.

This suggestion was rejected by John Heard, the chief technical officer for Smart Parking.

"The assertion of such functionality taking minutes is totally unfounded, and would be completely untenable for any viable parking system," said Mr Heard.

Mr Heard said the average time taken for a sensor to detect a vehicle departure was about one second.

Yesterday, Mr Foster said Mr Michael did not make an assertion about the functionality of the sensors.

"He commented about occasional issues that occur " about two per week out of more than 1500 sensors we have in place."

Mr Heard said it was inevitable that sensors would occasionally experience technical issues - "that's a fact of life" - but that there were safeguards in place to prevent against the issuing of incorrect fines.

Council staff are working with Smart Parking to fix the issues.

Sensors in inner city
Free, unlimited time spaces: 264
Mobility spaces: 67
15-minute spaces: 192
60-minute spaces: 136
90-minute spaces: 367
Metered and pay-and-display spaces: 525

What do you think?
Email editor@dailypost.co.nz, write a letter to PO Box 1442, Rotorua or text OP (message) to 021 242 4568.