BIG brother-style technology is on its way with shoppers using Orange Central car park to be forced to adhere to a daily three-hour parking limit.
The limit will be enforced by a high-tech electronic monitoring device that will record the number of hours each car spends in the car park.
Once a car’s visit exceeds the three-hour limit, the car’s owner will receive a $66 fine with a 25 per cent discount offered to people who pay the fine within 14 days.
The car park’s current time limit is two hours, but drivers are able to re-enter the facility as many times as they like as long as each visit doesn’t exceed two hours.
At the moment anyone who exceeds the two-hour limit is fined $88.
From March 1 Orange Central car park will no longer be patrolled by Orange City Council staff with Secure Parking taking over its management.
Secure Parking will use a device that scans number plates and automatically tallies the amount of time each car spends in the car park, even over multiple visits during the day.
Orange Central acting centre manager Nicole Chapman said the strategy is designed to improve the rotation and availability of parking spaces for shoppers and deter people who are not visiting the shopping centre but work there or nearby, from routinely parking there.
“We have listened to feedback from our retailers and are implementing this new management system to ensure we can continue to provide our retailers’ customers with free and convenient parking at the centre,” Mrs Chapman said.
“The majority of the terms and conditions of parking will remain unchanged however for clarification please read the terms and conditions signage located in the car park or contact the centre management office.”
Mrs Chapman said she expects the changes to improve car park security.
“Secure Parking will be patrolling the car park more regularly than council currently does” she said.
Mrs Chapman said Orange now has a number of supermarkets competing with Coles which operates out of Orange Central, so it was more important than ever for customers to be able to access convenient parking.
“We really want to keep people in the CBD and we hope customers will be very pleased with the result.”
tracey.prisk@ruralpres s.com
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