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What is the role of parking attendants? What areas do parking attendants patrol? What areas do police traffic wardens patrol? How are parking attendants evaluated?
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What is the role of parking attendants?
Parking attendants patrol
all the public parking, residents’ and other bays, and double and single
yellow lines throughout the city.
The police patrol the Greenways
bus routes, parking on pedestrian crossings or pavements and
obstruction.
We evaluate
Central Parking System, the company which recruits and manages parking attendants
for the city, by tracking statistics such as the number of streets visited,
errors and complaints. Here’s
how they did last year:
·
They visited
98.3% of the streets scheduled. Streets are scheduled to be visited a minimum
number of times a day, depending on the type of street (main traffic route,
residential, etc.)
and location (central or peripheral zone).
·
The number
of parking tickets that had to be cancelled due to parking attendant error
fell by 50%
last year, from 1.4% to 0.7%.
·
The percentage
of tickets which people wrote a letter of appeal about fell from 11.2 to 9.8%.
We keep track of this to measure the quality of penalty notices issued.
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Edinburgh now has one of the highest rates of
parking attendants with a nationally recognised
qualification in parking control in the United
Kingdom.
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Did you know parking attendants are often ambassadors for Edinburgh?
That may not be the picture most Edinburgh residents have of parking attendants, but watch one in central Edinburgh for more than a few minutes, and you’ll realise it’s true.
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“About every 10 minutes,
someone asks me a question,” says Steve, a parking attendant in
Grassmarket. The most common questions? How long is the Royal Mile? (It’s
1.2 miles long.)
Where is Edinburgh Castle? (Look up!) And how long can I park with a Blue Badge?
(There’s
no time limit in Edinburgh, unlike in many UK cities.)
All of us complain when we
receive a parking ticket. But, there are a lot of misconceptions out
there about parking attendants in Edinburgh. Top of the list? “The most common misconception
is that we’re on commission,” says Stuart, a long-time attendant. “Whether
I issue one ticket or
100 tickets, I get a salary.”
Despite the public perception, these two attendants enjoy their jobs.
“To me, I have a job that
I don’t dread coming into every day. I’m outside in short sleeves,”
comments Stuart on a lovely summer day.
“I see my boss twice a day, then I’m my own boss,” adds Steve.
And what is a day in the
life of a parking attendant like? Well, they start off their day with a team
briefing, which fills them in on any temporary restrictions and changes to
regulations. Then they
synchronise the time on their hand-held computers, leave the depot and begin
the day’s work.
They’re off to their designated
areas, answering questions about where and how people can
park correctly, giving directions, and checking to see if vehicles are parked
within regulations.
During the day, they walk
constantly. “We do cover an incredible amount of ground: six to eight
miles a day,” says Stuart. “It can be very tiring and hot sometimes.”
Attendants carry a lot of
technical equipment with them: a hand-held computer to input contraventions,
a printer for tickets, a radio and a camera. They take pictures of every vehicle
they ticket. In fact,
Edinburgh was the first city in the UK to use digital
cameras for every ticket. More than 10 million
images are taken each year.
And what are the most common
parking mistakes? “Meter feeding is the most common contravention –
I’d say 90% of the public don’t know,” agree both Stuart and Steve. In Edinburgh,
as in many cities, you
aren’t allowed to return to your vehicle in pay and display bay and top up
your voucher beyond the
maximum time.
After that, the most common
error they see is buying a pay and display voucher for a residents’ bay.
Under the terms of the parking regulations, these vehicles could be towed
immediately to make way
for residents, but Edinburgh parking attendants leave
the car until 15 minutes after a voucher has
expired.
Most attendants patrol the
same area each day, and many people would be surprised to learn they
often spend as much time giving directions and parking advice as they do issuing
tickets.
For each shift, parking attendants
must visit each street in their daily route a certain number of times.
How many times they need to visit is determined by a rating system based on
street type and street
location (for example, George Street is visited more
often than a residents’ bay on a side street).
There are
over 600 streets within the Controlled Parking Zone with over 2,500 visits
by 80 parking
attendants each day.
