Council plans to update car park machines

Car park machines are to be replaced or retrofitted

Car park ticket machines in Herefordshire are set to be upgraded for more reliable payments.

Herefordshire Council, which operates 32 public car parks around the county, is seeking interest from firms that could replace or retrofit the current stock of pay-and-display machines and improve their performance and connectivity.

Its 54 current car park machines are about 12 years old, and 15 of them only accept coins.

A spokesman for the council said it was "an early-stage exercise whereby the council is seeking information and feedback from the market on a range of possible solutions".

The council also wants the contractor to improve card service processing, install vehicle registration mark keypads, and manage and maintain the devices.

The machines process transactions using 4G modems, but some areas have "limited signal strength, resulting in a considerable delay to customers making card payments", council papers said.

Plans for the upgraded machines include offering better connectivity and linking vehicle registration numbers to tickets.

The council also wants to know whether replacing some or all of the machines would be more cost-effective and whether machines could be adapted to potential changes in the future, such as adding emission-based surcharges.

It is seeking responses by 20 June, with procurement of services to come later.

The plan is to have new machines installed by next February, council papers said.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.