Brisbane City Council announced the end to cash payments at 960 parking meters which operate 7500 parking spaces around Auchenflower, Buranda, Bowen Hills, Fortitude Valley, Kelvin Grove, Milton, Newstead, South Brisbane, West End and Woolloongabba.
Council announced the decision to discontinue cash payments from parking meters last month from which time the only payments accepted at parking meters would be via credit card, smartphone or the CellOPark app.
Councillor, David McLachlan, said cash payments in Queensland had dropped from 35 percent to 15 percent across the board.
“This steep decline in cash use over recent months is clearly a direct response to the pandemic, and consumers are clearly showing trends to minimise contact with physical currency.”
“What this proved to us is that so few people use coin payments, with motorists embracing technology to pay for parking.
“Using cashless payments only for parking is a sign of how we are working to quickly adapt to a new normal post-coronavirus.
“Not only are cashless payments great for a hygiene purpose, they also significantly reduce maintenance costs for our meters by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which is a great outcome for ratepayers.”
Speaking about the announcement Michael Doherty, Head of Business Development at Smarter City Solutions, said, “It’s great to see Brisbane Council take an innovative approach to parking by ending cash payments at meters to keep up with our evolving digital society.”
“In the midst of COVID we’ve seen retail and hospitality businesses switch to contactless payments for hygiene purposes and it’s natural that our parking should follow suit.”
“Contactless parking payment solutions such as ours have been on the market for a while now, maturing to become sophisticated technology that meets the needs and expectations of motorists.”
“Motorists in Brisbane have enjoyed the simplicity of Smarter City Solutions’s CellOPark app since 2016. They are able to choose parking zones using GPS or QR Codes, start and stop sessions at the push of a button and manage their payments all through their smartphone app or mobile website.”
“CellOPark also provides a pay-by-call solution for those who are unable to use the smart phone app.”
