oh. the irony.

An electronic device which lets parking ticketeers know that you've overstayed at your certain parking spot.

"Although electronic enforcement options can be costly to implement and maintain, these costs could be offset by increased revenue from infringement notices and increased community satisfaction," the report said.

offset? implying that your costs of running are not fully covered and you are running at a loss?  i do think the increased community satisfaction is definitely a bit of an overstetch. It's not like the community (the business where the parking is there to service) are CRYING out for these horrendous overparking customers who frequent their shops. I'm not sure "community satisfaction" does much for offsetting costs, not many people will be thinking, I'm so glad you've installed this system let me drive by and drop off a donation to offset your running cost. But well anyways another choice quote...

One of the Victorian councils using the devices had seen a 60 per cent reduction in the number of overstayers in the year after PODS was installed, he said.

"It's true that the number of overstayers detected increases in the short term but better enforcement changes behaviour and, in the longer term, there are fewer overstayers."

So in the long term, the presence of the device causes a monumental decrease in overstayers. Wow, thats pretty good, but wait its the overstayers who "offset" the cost to "implement and maintain". Oh no, that means over the time of the installation of these devices 60% of them will no longer be financially sound. What do we do then? They are putting themselves out of business, such good samartians.

"PODS has proved a revenue-raising success in several Victorian councils. In Melbourne's Maribyrnong Council, for example, the number of infringement notices issued for time-limit breaches jumped from 3734 to 7830 in the year following the installation of the system."

So lets seem thats an approximate 210% increase in "overstayers", but in the long term the 60% decrease leaves us with 4700 overstayers. You guys have bad math. "in the longer term, there are fewer [MORE] overstayers" . To sum up, thank you PODS for catering for our "community satisfaction" by giving us an increase of 125% overstayers with your brand new system. I'm so glad you would take on such an expensive project with your costs only "offset".

"The managing director of Vehicle Monitoring Systems, Saxon Hill, said he was in discussion with several other NSW councils about his product, which he insisted was not about making money, but about alleviating the shortage of parking spaces."

This is definitely not about revenue, it definitely serves the community in the same way as red light and speed cameras. Thanks Saxon. I wonder how easy these will be to break...

full article here