FEATURE COMPANY FOCUS
fines, save companies time and fuel, and enable
them to plan multiple drop-offs. Kerbsides are, he says ‘a precious piece of real
estate that need proper management’. Moreover, the system should help manage traffic
flow at peak hours by encouraging rapid loading and unloading along London’s red routes and stretches of double yellow road where loading is currently banned. Local authority enforcement officers would know
by checking on-line whether or not any vehicle was legally parked. Herron is working with councils in, and outside,
London on the next stages. He says parking tickets cost commerce around £500m a year and a further £100m in administration time. A report by Colin Buchanan Associates makes the economic case for virtual parking spaces on London’s red routes. ‘Compelling’, he adds – the saving from smoothing traffic flow could exceed £30m.
Reducing the risk Herron has already protected Activ8’s intellectual property rights and thinks the scheme could expand to accommodate utility companies and blue badge holders. He’s also looking at the coach sector. ‘If you have disabled passengers, you can’t stop far away from where they want to be,’ he says. ‘So you drop them off outside and risk a parking ticket. Some operators may then have to go up to 25 miles out of London to find a coach park.’ Activ8VPS is still a work in progress. What, for
instance, if a driver is behind schedule? Herron intends that the software, developed by Northgate Information Solutions, should make it possible to pre-book 100 metres of road, and so accommodate late-comers. Eventually a multi-stop delivery run need not be disrupted if there’s a hiccup along the way. ‘Delivery drivers may be able to re-route if they
Every piece of kerbside is valuable real estate
know they’re going to be delayed,’ he says. ‘Te algorithms (to make Activ8 work) exist. All
we need do is join them up. We’re moving towards proof of concept trials and expect these to start later this year.’ Herron says he’s had interest from ‘many’ local authorities but ‘commercial confidentiality’ precludes him from giving further details of who these are, and any trial schedules. Meanwhile Herron’s battles – and those of other
campaigners – against council enforcement policies continue, not always successfully. A long legal struggle against Sunderland City Council, where he contested the validity of a local authority controlled parking zone (CPZ), recently ended in defeat at the Court of Appeal.
Parking tickets cost commerce around £500m a year and a further £100m in administration time
Herron had sought judicial review of previous
decisions, which had dismissed a claim that the CPZ was not properly signposted. But Appeal Court judges rejected the argument that an entire zone became invalid simply because a sign hadn’t been displayed in one location. Although dismayed by the Sunderland outcome,
Herron is heartened by events in Richmond, where thousands of motorists who were fined after being photographed by the borough council’s CCTV ‘Smartcars’ are due to get their money back – around £1.1m in total, after the cameras were found to be uncertified. It’s proved an expensive oversight for Richmond,
but Herron regards the council’s decision to repay the fines as ‘very honourable’.
Calling for a watchdog But there may be more fallout. Te campaign group Notomob is calling on Transport Secretary Philip Hammond to suspend all civil parking enforcement in England and Wales carried out by fixed and mobile CCTV pending an investigation and review of the Vehicle Certification Authority (VCA). Notomob says VCA and the DFT failed in their
duty to certificate local authority CCTV systems in line with the Transport Management Act 2004 and EU directives. If Hammond ignores them, Notomob has threatened to take up the case with the local government ombudsman and EU Commission. Herron says the lack of a statutory watchdog to
investigate the parking industry is a problem. ‘Te DfT has stood aside and left it to campaigners to take things to the courts and judicial review.’ Yet while these are battles that call for a strong will, there’s no sign of Herron backing off any time soon.
30 OCTOBER 2011
www.britishparking.co.uk
© JAY WILLIAMS
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