There have been some great
recent innovations in the Queen Vic Market car parking system including the
free first hour for customers, however, one change is causing some grief with
traders.
Traders receive a parking
concession for using the car park as part of their business logistics. The
system used to be quite simple – unload at your stall, park your vehicle in the
car park, and collect a discount voucher from the car park booth on the way
back to your stall. But that voucher system was being abused by city workers so
the vouchers are now only available to traders at the F1 shop on Queen St.
The problem is that the F1
Shop does not open until later in the morning so traders have to remember to
return to the F1 shop later in the day, in fact by 11:00am. That may sound simple but when you are
involved in the logistics of setting up your stall, opening for business, and serving
customers it is easy to forget a parking voucher or at least put off collection
until there is a lull in business. The penalty for forgetting to pick up a
discount voucher is only $20 (a $35 parking charge versus $15 discounted
parking) but for some reason that really hurts particularly when the problem
could be easily fixed with some simple adjustment.
Our car park facilities are cutting
edge. We have electronic gates, the latest payment systems, and even number
plate recognition. Automating the process of parking vouchers should be
manageable perhaps through automatic recognition of trader’s vehicles, or some
sort of monthly account debit. Either way, a number of traders believe that the menial task of physically
collecting parking vouchers needs to be replaced with something a bit more 21st
Century.
COMMENTS:
11/10/2016 10:27:01 Trader Parking Vouchers "Fundamentally, the stated purpose of Trader Parking Vouchers is for any/all traders who legitimately need to park their vehicles while working at the market. It is not an early bird parking voucher especially now that the option is only available to traders so in essence a 'cut off time' fails to recognise that change, the core purpose of the vouchers and some of the reasons why traders may occasionally be unable to pick up the voucher before a certain time. Like other processes at the market there seems to be a gap between the underlying purpose and the implementation procedures being applied." Ivano
11/10/2016 10:27:01 Trader Parking Vouchers "Fundamentally, the stated purpose of Trader Parking Vouchers is for any/all traders who legitimately need to park their vehicles while working at the market. It is not an early bird parking voucher especially now that the option is only available to traders so in essence a 'cut off time' fails to recognise that change, the core purpose of the vouchers and some of the reasons why traders may occasionally be unable to pick up the voucher before a certain time. Like other processes at the market there seems to be a gap between the underlying purpose and the implementation procedures being applied." Ivano