An interesting (if not slightly tongue-in-cheek) article over at The Register mentions that e-commerce payments company paythru have teamed with Parkeon to introduce a new service called ParkREG.
It sounds like a private parking version of Transport for London’s AutoPay system used for the Congestion Charge. While using ANPR in car parks is nothing new, this is usually done to issue penalties. The difference here would be that you could set-up a pre-pay account, or choose to be billed for your car park stays on a monthly basis. It could in theory eliminate tickets being issued.
There are currently 11 sites in operation and the company have plans to expand. I think that anything that allows drivers more options to pay for their parking, and potentially avoid tickets sounds like a good thing. There are potential concerns over data protection and privacy, but it does seem that ANPR is here to stay.
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