October 21, 2004
M-Parking in Vienna
Vienna has opted for payment by mobile phone rather than install parking meters. Ken Young reports for The Guardian.
"The Austrian capital has just completed its first year of allowing residents to pay for any of its 126,000 short-term parking spaces by mobile phone, under what it calls its M-Parking system.
The scheme, now used by 48,000 of the city's 650,000 registered drivers, is one of the largest in western Europe, and is being used as something of a test case for the viability of payment by mobile phone."
To use the service, drivers must subscribe online or by phone to have their details entered into the database running the service. Subsequently, when they choose a parking space, they send a text message indicating the number of minutes they want to park. The system returns a confirmation to their phone and, if they wish, also alerts them 10 minutes before their time is up. This allows them a top-up (up to a maximum of 90 minutes) if they want to stay longer.
Users can either arrange for debit payments to be taken from their bank account, or create a pre-pay account, in the same manner as Transport for London's Oyster card."
Related:
-- Parking Fees to Be Paid by SMS -Sofia municipality (Bulgaria) will introduce a new "Pay and display" parking fee system.
-- Austrians purchase car-parking tickets by mobile phones - About 50,000 drivers are now purchasing their car-parking tickets by mobile phone and SMS in Vienna and five other cities in Austria. "M-parking" was introduced a year ago by German IT services provider Siemens Business Services and mobile operator Mobilkom Austria.
-- mParking - The first scheme in the UK which allows drivers to pay for parking by mobile phone has been launched in Scotland (October 2003).
-- Sydney Council today (March 19, 2004) launched its new mobile phone payment parking system, which not only allows motorists to pay for metered parking using their mobile phone - but also lets them know via SMS that their meter is due to expire.
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