The adjacent coin-operated machine had been sealed and could not be used. There was another one some distance down the road that would still accept coins.
Hmm. The one functioning machine left in use was a clapped-out thing prone to jamming. And it was a hundred yards away down the hill. Did I want to chance it? Leave my car on a spot I hadn't yet paid for, and dash two hundred yards there and back, on the off-chance of the other machine working?
I had never paid by phone before, and didn't have the necessary app installed on my phone. It would involve too much fiddling around in public, with phone and credit card exposed to passers-by, while I registered and entered my car and credit card details, prior to actually buying some time. I couldn't sit in my car and do it all from there, safely behind locked doors. I wouldn't be able to read the notice and the details on it. (That was Fiona, the dark blue car behind the notice in the picture)
Well, I scurried downhill, successfully obtained a two-hour paper ticket, panted uphill again, and displayed it inside Fiona. Now I was parked legally. All this had wasted time. I had a hair appointment at Trevor Sorbie. I'd driven into Brighton with a fifteen-minute time margin for parking. It had now melted away, and I was in my usual panic rush to be somewhere on time. I did make it, but only just.
Even so, problems remained for the future. This upper part of White Street had now been converted to parking by phone only, meaning that for the future I must remember that Fiona could be left there for a maximum of two hours only, not four as before. This had consequences for my Tuesday late-afternoon trips into town, to meet up with friends. Street parking was free after 8.00pm, and up to now I'd been able to arrive and park from 4.00pm on a four-hour ticket. But now it couldn't be before 6.00pm. I would probably be forced to give up tripping into Brighton on Tuesdays, unless there were a definite event to attend, not just a casual drink. Thanks, Brighton and Hove Council, for impairing my social life.
And in order to park on-street anywhere at all, in or near the city centre, I'd have to get to grips with this app. Sigh.
Hair cut and styled, I nipped into a pub - The Sussex Arms in The Lanes - ordered some lunch and a gin-and-tonic, and addressed myself to downloading the app and setting myself up on it. The promise was that once set up, the app would make paying for parking easy. Hah.
The Council use PayByPhone.co.uk as their appointed phone-payment company. I took the precaution of looking at the Council's website and following the link to the right payment company, rather than just searching for it on Google Play Store. There are of course a number of different companies, all with similar names. It was wise indeed to take the installation of the correct app slowly and carefully in the quiet of a pub, and not attempt to do it standing in the street!
Well, setting-up went pretty easily, I have to admit. So I'm now ready to go. My first pay by phone parking session will be next Tuesday, when I have a last pre-Christmas drink with the girls in Brighton. If all goes to plan, I simply find a convenient space, fire up the app, and enter what I want.
Say I use the same space as yesterday. I'll need to enter my parking location (84878), the amount of time I want to buy (2 hours for £2.00, to take me up to 8.00pm), confirm that I am parking the car with the registration SC10 CUR and no other, and then OK all that. I should get an on-screen confirmation, and can then walk away. My credit card account will be charged, and a message will be sent to the mobile device carried by the Council Parking Officer, confirming that SC10 CUR has that space for the next two hours. And I can view the details of what I've bought on the app. In fact I will build up an online record of my phone-paid parking in Brighton, viewable on my phone at any time, which could well be very useful. The fee for all this is 10p each time I park, so I will actually pay £2.10 next Tuesday, not just £2.00.
There are two major refinements. I can if I wish arrange to have a text message sent to me, to remind me when the parking time is nearing expiry, which could be useful if engaged in Deep Conversation in some pub, but at 10p a pop it's just too expensive. So I haven't signed up for that. The other thing is that I can extend the parking time, using the app, without having to go back to the parking place - which is obviously a great convenience. I can't do it, however, if I have already bought the maximum parking time allowed.
The nagging worry is that the technology won't work as advertised. Either I won't be able to connect and buy parking time; or I can, but the message won't get through to the Council's Parking Officer and he'll give me a Parking Fine Notice. Apparently a Notice erroneously given can be rescinded, but that will involve writing to the Council with evidence of payment, and some hassle.
Do you feel, like me, that it would all be much more straightforward just to insert a few coins in a machine?
I know what will happen. Daily visitors to Brighton, who know what's what, will seek out the few parking spaces near coin-operated machines, because you can buy more parking time using a machine, in addition to the sheer convenience of using coins. People like me will be left with only the limited-time pay by phone spaces. The Council's multi-story car parks will still be coin and card operated, but they will now become much busier, making it harder to park there.
All of it will make visiting Brighton city centre harder, more of a mission than it is even now. It's never been a joyride to drive into Brighton. The blanket 20 mph speed limit as you approach the city centre may keep the traffic flowing, but only at a maddening crawl - and it's difficult to keep within that limit when you want to go uphill, when the car needs some momentum; and Brighton is a very hilly place. And now this latest decision to enforce parking payments by phone...
There isn't much that takes me into Brighton. Granted, the shops are good, the restaurants are brilliant, and I have my hair done there. I can, if it's a daytime visit, and I have time to spare, and the weather is clement, use the train. Otherwise I can see myself giving Brighton the finger. It'll be just too much trouble to go there.
