Brisbane City moves to cashless parking

MEDIA STATEMENT - Sydney, New South Wales, Wednesday 10 February - Brisbane City Council announced the end to cash payments at 960 parking meters which operate 7500 parking spaces around Auchenflower, Buranda, Bowen Hills, Fortitude Valley, Kelvin Grove, Milton, Newstead, South Brisbane, West End and Woolloongabba.

Brisbane City Council announced the decision to drop cash payments from parking meters at Tuesday’s full council meeting. From February 22, the only payments accepted at parking meters will be via credit card, smartphone or the CellOPark app.

“I am advised that cash payments in Queensland dropped from 35 percent to 15 per cent across the board,” infrastructure committee chairman David McLachlan told the meeting.

“This steep decline in cash use over recent months is clearly a direct response to the pandemic, and consumers are clearly showing trends to minimise contact with physical currency.”

“What this proved to us is that so few people use coin payments, with motorists embracing technology to pay for parking,” Cr McLachlan said.

“Using cashless payments only for parking is a sign of how we are working to quickly adapt to a new normal post-coronavirus.

“Not only are cashless payments great from a hygiene purpose, they also significantly reduce maintenance costs for our meters by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which is a great outcome for ratepayers.”

Speaking about the announcement Michael Doherty, Head of Business Development at Smarter City Solutions, says “It’s great to see Brisbane Council take an innovative approach to parking by ending cash payments at meters to keep up with our evolving digital society.”

“In the midst of Covid we’ve seen retail and hospitality businesses switch to contactless payments for hygiene purposes and it’s natural that our parking should follow suit.”

“Contactless parking payment solutions such as ours have been on the market for a while now, maturing to become sophisticated technology that meets the needs and expectations of motorists.”

“Motorists in Brisbane have enjoyed the simplicity of Smarter City Solutions’s CellOPark app since 2016. They are able to choose parking zones using GPS or QR Codes, start and stop sessions at the push of a button and manage their payments all through their phone or mobile website.”

“CellOPark also provides a pay-by-call solution for those who are unable to use the smart phone app. Motorists can call 0756 4652 22 and follow the prompts to start and stop their parking.”

-ENDS-

Michael Doherty Bio

Michael Doherty has been at the forefront of parking technology for close to a decade, having worked with many of the businesses behind Australia’s leading parking and payment apps and cloud-based permit and compliance technologies. As Head of Business Development for Smarter City Solutions, he oversees the sales and marketing of unique integrated parking solutions for local councils, universities, corporate clients all over Australia and beyond.

Michael was the first employee at Smarter City Solutions when it launched as CellOPark in 2013. He returned to the company in 2020. 

Multi-disciplined with a solid, 25-year strong track record in information technology, Michael embraces disruptive technology and looks forward to a future where parking permit stickers and coin-fed meters are a thing of the past.

Smarter City Solutions Bio

Smarter City Solutions (SCS) is an established Australian software and technology services organisation that is leading the way with integrated parking systems. SCS is delivering award winning parking solutions derived from interconnected cloud-based technologies using its own pay-by-app and virtual permit systems as well as vCompliance for infringement issuance and systems from other leading parking technology providers. Smarter City Solutions is on a mission to develop software and systems that enable parking providers to enable a better experience of parking and administrative infrastructure for their staff and stakeholders.