Auckland Transport have put together a pretty good video to explain the parking strategy they adopted late last year.

Perhaps the most interesting outcome from the video is that AT are developing a parking app that will let people pay for an on street carpark. It appears that you simply tag on within the app when you arrive and tag off again when you get back to your car so no need to fiddle around with parking machines or paper tickets. I would hope that it somehow integrates with HOP balances as it would be incredibly stupid and annoying to have to have multiple accounts for different AT services.

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28 comments

  1. It makes sense to somehow integrate with your HOP balance. If they can find a way to make things as inconvenient as possible, they will.

    1. Wilson already have a parking app called ParkMate which I have used for about a year. Not a fan of Wilson, but their app is great given I’m in sales and never know how long I’ll be.

    2. The lack of an official WP app from AT is a good reason why they need to make their data feeds open such that others can develop apps, something people have been asking for years, and which is highly successful in other countries but yet again AT doesn’t seem interested.

  2. I can understand the potential benefit of making it work with HOP for AT – branding, drives HOP take-up etc, but for the user? Surely it’s more convenient just to take payment directly from the users credit / debit card.

    1. You can already link HOP to your credit card so it automatically tops up when the balance gets low. Be nice to cut out the middle step, and just bill the credit card directly, but close enough.

  3. AT should really be pushing HOP onto things like parking meters and vending machines.

    In Tokyo your Suica card can be used in most vending machines/shops. When I was there last I had some spare yen on my card before leaving so I used it to get a beer while I was waiting for the train to the Airport.

  4. Yes Wilson app good simple to use. If AT’s App Uses Hop card, credit card or PayPal would be good.

  5. Wellington parking machines have accepted Snapper for some time, so it shouldn’t be to hard for AT Hop to do similar (though with Snapper you prepay – no tagging off).

    Paying directly with contactless credit card already happens on London’s transport (don’t know about parking), and it will be good when that arrives in NZ.

  6. What happens if you forget to ‘tag out’ of a car park? Does you continue to get charged, or is there a maximum, like hop?

    1. A suggestion to the app developers: GPS/location functionality that detects when you’ve left the area without “tagging off” — gives you a reminder/notification to tag off.

      1. I may be being thick, but how will AT Hop know that I’ve left the area in the vehicle that had been parked? And if it can detect this, why can’t it detect that I’ve left a train/bus and so avoid tagging off there, too?

        1. You would have to confirm you have left. If you do, and your car is still there, it will be ticketed like other cars who fail to pay and display.

        2. I can see the sense of that – but I can’t see any relevance to my question, or to xX etc’s post that I was responding to, sorry.

        3. I’m a huge fan of Auckland Transport’s demand response pricing policy. However they don’t seem to be implementing it where it is most needed. For example I passed through princes street today at around 5:30pm. There were in excess of 30 car’s double parked, waiting for parking spaces to become available. Clearly having princes street become free after 6pm is way below market price.

        4. Fair point.

          I believe they tried to extend the hours of pay and display in the city centre a couple of years ago and got shouted down by a combination of residents and students. Sounds like AT should probably try again! It always was busy and always needes prices to go later.

        5. They did change the rules. The ‘free parking after 6’ general rule was retired and there is P&D zones throughout the central city that run well past 6pm. They can be extended, but the point is they weren’t ‘shouted down’. Incidentally I don’t personally think it’s done much for availability as I’ve found it easier to just park in buildings than on the street, so more refinement could be needed.

        6. AT are increasing prices and extending hours across the CBD because the price is still well below market rate and thus occupancy is too high.

        7. @buttwizard69420

          You are talking about the blue area’s on this map:

          https://at.govt.nz/media/imported/5277/ccpz-map.pdf

          I am talking about the green and yellow area’s. They contain Key locations like the university, and Wynyard quarter. Occupancy for the few hours after 6pm, is constantly above the council goal. Therefor under their strategy the current price (zero) should be reviewed, and increased.

        8. The stupid thing is, there are a couple of more or less empty buidings just a few blocks away. But of course these still charge $10 if you park there.

        9. Indeed they wouldn’t know, so as Scott said it would just be a suggestion to tag off (with an accordingly easy UI to confirm – eg ‘swipe left’), not an automatic tagoff.

          Feasible with public transport, but much more complicated as it would have to have knowledge of routes. Parking would be easy – a radius around the parking location.

  7. I’d prefer just credit card, I don’t have the wait for the system to reconcile and its should be enabled then for Tap and go on the meters. A number of future solutions when you look overseas have moved directly to debit/credit card and away from the proprietary transport solutions. Be interesting to see how progressive AT’s parking team can be.

  8. Subtle point but paying for parking with HOP emphasizes that drving/parking is just one in a suite of options – I’d incorporate functionality which would calculate the cost difference between parking and other things that you could spend with your HOP money I.e bus fare.

  9. The phone app sounds promising, I’ve often wondered if the HOP card could be adapted for parking machines. Let’s hope the ‘pay for what you use’ ethos applies to parking buildings, since I was wholly unimpressed to be charged a $12 ‘flat fee’ for 30 minutes in the Aotea carpark a few weekends back.

  10. Since it removes the need for any infrastructure, perhaps it can be rolled out to all of auckland, including residential streets, to stop that public subsidy of car ownership. It’s often argued that cars pay for the roads out of taxes on fuel, but a parked car isn’t using any fuel but is using the road.

  11. There is an error in the video.

    The Gentleman’s phone shows that he is paying for Rego: OGU438 (between 3.20 and 3.27; but is picking up a Car with a Rego: JGU433 (at 3.30)!

    AT should correct this video; if not it gives a wrong message!

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