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Metric in City's Smart Card Parking Experiment
07 December 2010

Metric Group is pleased to announce that the city of Leicester is using Metric machines in an experimental residents parking scheme. The Aura pay-and-display machines in the Westcotes area of Leicester are issuing smart cards for residents to obtain free or cheap parking for visitors.

The scheme, which was four years in the planning, enables residents to use their smart cards so that visitors can have two hours of free parking or 48 hours for £1.

It is the first scheme of its kind in Leicester and involves ten Metric Aura machines in the Westcotes area of the city which has 14 streets of varying lengths. Six of the alpha numeric machines are located on Western Road, two on Gaul Street and one each on Equity Street and Celt Street.

Transport development officer, Chris Middleton, said: "We did a survey of residents and asked them if they wanted a scheme and there was a positive vote from this area of the city. This particular scheme was at the planning stage for four years before recently going 'live'.
"There are a lot of shops in the area and we wanted to combine short term pay and display parking with a residents smart card scheme," he added.
Nigel Clarke, parking team leader, said that people were getting used to using the scheme which was an 18-month experiment. "The idea is to assist people who don't live in the area to make a short visit – it allows flexibility."

The ten Metric Aura smart card machines are networked to the city's recently upgraded ASLAN web-based back office system. Leicester has approximately 200 Metric machines in total.