North Sydney Council parking meters set to go completely cashless – but not everyone is happy about the change
The city council has announced that all parking meters will soon be cashless. However, this decision is met with resistance from residents.
North Sydney City Council has announced that all parking meters under its jurisdiction on the north side of the city’s Harbor Bridge will no longer use cash. This will coincide with the closure of Australia’s 3G network.
“Our parking meters are changing due to the upcoming closure of the 3G network across Australia,” the council said in a statement.
‘All existing parking meters in the North Sydney LGA use this network, making an upgrade necessary.’
The rollout of the new meters will take place in the coming month.
There are no other changes to paid parking zones or time limits.
The Council said there are a number of reasons to go cashless: only four percent of people using meters still insert coins into the machines.
“Over the past year, the number of people using coin parking has fallen to less than 4 percent,” the report said.
North Sydney City Council has announced it is ‘upgrading’ all of its parking meters to be cashless
‘Faults in our current parking meters mainly occur due to vandalism of coin machines and congestion.
‘The abolition of coin payments will ensure the long-term reliability of our parking meters by reducing these ongoing maintenance costs.’
However, not everyone agreed with the change.
“Absolutely ridiculous, who wants to make a card transaction for $1?” one person wrote online.
Another warned that scammers were placing fake QR codes on meters, making motorists think they were paying council tax.
The new cashless parking meters were met with mixed reactions from locals commenting online
“I wonder how they plan to prevent that?” the person asked.
Another commenter approved the change with one caveat.
“It’s faster to tap it than find a $1 coin, as long as they don’t pass the card fee on to us,” they said.