More than 500,000 fines given by Auckland Transport’s licence plate recognition vehicles
The amount of drivers pinged annually by Auckland Transport’s license plate recognition vehicles has almost doubled.
Data provided to Newstalk ZB shows the licence plate recognition vehicles issued more than 518,000 fines last year.
That’s almost twice as many as they gave out in 2023.
The cars scan licence plates to see if a vehicle has overstayed its paid time in a parking spot.
If a violation is detected, the system can issue an infringement notice.
Parking Services group manager John Strawbridge said the rise was because the fleet increased from nine cars in 2023 to 16 last year.
He said the most common type of infringement is failing to pay for parking in paid zones.
“That’s a $70 fine. It does my head in because if you use the AT Park app, for example, you only pay for the short time you’re there.”
He said people would very rarely pay $70.
AA policy director Martin Glynn said the jump between 2023 and 2024 is large, and they had asked AT about it.
He said he hopes the system is being used for the stated goal of keeping parking spots clear.
“In the past year or so, they’ve been set some pretty big revenue targets by the mayor and Auckland Council from areas they can get revenue from, including parking.”
Strawbridge said while no one likes getting a parking fine, there needs to be a way to manage kerbs and other spots.
“If we didn’t manage the kerbside, there’d be cars parked everywhere, it would be unsafe, and there’d be very limited opportunity for people to come into the city and find a spot,” he said.
Strawbridge said the Auckland Domain is a good example of how the license plate recognition vehicles had helped, with the consistent enforcement keeping the domain at 65% capacity.
“Prior to the LPR cars, we were only able to get up there on foot infrequently, so there was no parking availability.”
Glynn said the cars provide another potential benefit.
“We know it’s become more unsafe for parking wardens, so there’s an advantage to doing it in that automated way where people don’t receive their tickets on the spot.”
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Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
Time to Tickle Your Thinker 🧠
If a zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo, and two pairs of babies are born for each one of the original animals, then (sadly) 23 animals don’t survive, how many animals do you have left in total?
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Poll: As a customer, what do you think about automation?
The Press investigates the growing reliance on your unpaid labour.
Automation (or the “unpaid shift”) is often described as efficient ... but it tends to benefit employers more than consumers.
We want to know: What do you think about automation?
Are you for, or against?
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9.5% For. Self-service is less frustrating and convenient.
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43.3% I want to be able to choose.
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47.2% Against. I want to deal with people.
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