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From 9 March 2009, motorists parking across the London Borough of Richmond can pay for their parking using RingGo phone parking. The service is to cover all council operated bays across the whole Borough - a total of 2,500 on-street and 3,100 off-street, spaces. For this implementation, the RingGo service is also being specially tailored to the Council's requirements, for example incorporating parking restrictions to cater for "Twickenham Event Days". Richmond Council will join many other Councils nearby in using the single London RingGo number - 020 3046 0010 - extending the reach of RingGo across a wide Western belt of London, and allowing users to experience the same simple and familar process wherever they choose to park. Councillor David Trigg, Cabinet Member for Traffic Transport and Parking on Richmond Council, the first person to use RingGo in Richmond, says of the system: "People parking in Richmond, whether they are local residents or visitors, now have more choice about how they pay for their parking. Some may not wish to use the technology and paying with coins is still an option. But many people don't carry so much change now, so paying by mobile phone is an excellent alternative." The roll out of RingGo follows the announcement in January that Richmond Council hopes to extend their existing environmentally-based parking permits scheme to all parking within the borough - providing carbon-metered parking via RingGo and a specially developed Richmond smart card. Carbon-Metered Parking is the process of automatically linking parking charges for a bay to the carbon dioxide emissions of the occupying vehicle and so encouraging greater environmental awareness and responsibility. Cars that emit lower levels of carbon dioxide will benefit from a reduced parking fee. Those ranked in the higher emission bands will pay more. The unique benefit of using RingGo to provide this facility is that tariffs, payment and enforcement are all calculated automatically as part of the digital payment process, without any need for users to pre-pay. When Richmond pioneered emissions related parking permit charges, a number other London boroughs followed suit. It is expected that the planned ground-breaking introduction of carbon-metered parking will similarly lead to further implementations elsewhere. Councillor David Trigg says: "As a Council, we are keen to extend this service into its second phase, where parking fees are linked to the environmental emissions of the vehicle. Rewarding people who use less-polluting cars is a positive step towards reaching both our local and UK air pollution targets and we hope to implement this further stage soon." |
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