Paying to park a car is so difficult it’s easier to stay in

IN THE dim and distant past, on a day out to a town or city, you would park your car in a designated car park. On the way in, you would pass a little hut or kiosk, wherein sat a man who would hand over a ticket stamped with your arrival time.

Later, after a hopefully pleasant day out, you would return to your car and drive out, passing the little hut or kiosk, where you would hand back your ticket and pay the fee. This was usually in cash, because in those days we weren’t talking three-figure sums.

Now, even the idea of visiting somewhere that could potentially involve the use of official car parks fills me with dread. This is all down to automatic car parking machines. These things scare the life out of me. On the occasions when I have been forced to use them – when there has been no alternative within a three-mile radius – I have generally had to enlist the help of others. On occasion, I have simply given up and driven off.

The last time I attempted to use one, in the North Yorkshire town of Northallerton, I couldn’t get the machine to accept my money, and, along with two other drivers, became even more flustered when a passer-by said the car park would start charging after ten minutes, having captured our vehicles on camera at the entrance. We sped out of there faster than F1 Ferraris.

I was reminded of this while reading about a woman fined for spending 11 minutes in a car park in Stratford-upon-Avon, after, she alleges, finding the car park machine broken. Her initial £100 fine rocketed to £270 after she refused to pay.

A similar thing happened to me in a small car park in Grasmere in the Lake District. Not too long ago only large car parks in popular towns like Ambleside and Keswick had car parking machines. On our last visit to the Lakes, in early 2020, they seemed to be everywhere, even on tiny roadside patches of soil, which this was.

The machine took my money but I couldn’t get it to register my number plate – it was stuck on the previous one. As suggested by another motorist I took pictures of the meter. We left immediately and I contacted the company in question, who noted what had happened. I didn’t get a fine, but it affected our day out – we ended up driving back to our hotel and walking nearby.

Things are getting worse not better. Now many car parks have removed pay-and-display machines and are changing to remote app-only payments to reduce maintenance costs. I don’t want dozens of parking apps for different companies cluttering up my phone, and chances are I would struggle to use them anyway. I recently came across a man in York standing beside his car fretting as his phone was stuck on the pay screen, the little white circle whirling endlessly around. Not everywhere has great internet reception.

Also, I am loathe to tap my bank details into a car park machine, or indeed pass them to a car parking firm I know nothing about.

This sort of thing unnerves me so much that we now tend to go most places by bus or train. Of course this has its advantages environmentally, but it definitely restricts where we go and how often.

It’s yet another example of a world that doesn’t care about people who are not comfortable with modern technology. Some older people don’t even have mobile phones and others may not own a smartphone. Having to download an app to pay for parking, when short-stay amounts can be as little as £1, seems to me ludicrous.

I still have a bag of coins in my car – a throwback from the man-in-hut days – for use in parking meters. In my experience few people like parking apps. I live in hope that, one day, we technophobes will rise up, and the tide will turn.