Charlbury Station parking charges

Fri 19 Aug 2016, 12:42 (last edited on Fri 19 Aug 2016, 12:50)

Charlie, Covering up your number plates is illegal. I'm pretty sure it's a public highway, not a private road. It's certainly not a road owned by Apcoa, which is one reason why a lot of Apcoa fines don't get as far as the courts if registered keepers of vehicles refuse to pay. Trevor's suggestions are much more sensible.

Although this system is new to Charlbury, it is not (very sadly) new to Network Rail. It's just that we have come into line with other stations using ANPR technology, but in a way that is quite inappropriate to Charlbury Station's out-of-town situation.

If lots of people are going to be driving in and out of the station car park round the mini-roundabout, that is a safety hazard. There is also no guarantee that they won't attract a fine. The cameras are only 97% accurate, so could easily miss an exist and re-entrance. Quite a few of the appeals that go to Popla concern disputes over "double dipping".

If you look at the Parking on Private Land (Popla) Appeals website, you will see that the Grace Period is a legal matter, and changed fairly recently after a very high profile court case that went to Appeal (and was decided in against the consumer who complained). The grace period is now defined as 10 minutes to leave the car park at the end of the paid parking period, but the initial time before the contract starts is not fixed. In the case of Apcoa, it has to be time enough for the driver to find a parking place, to get to the payment point, read the details and accept the contract -- & time to drive out immediately if they refuse the stated terms.

This will vary from car park to car park; in the case of Charlbury Apcoa seem to have assessed it as 15 minutes, but this could be appealed on an individual basis (involving not mitigating circumstances, but broken machines and the like).

What we want is something different from this, i.e. free parking for an hour so that we are not liable if a train is late, if queuing to buy a ticket, to renew a railcard, or if waiting for a mobility impaired (or just slow!) passenger to negotiate their way from the opposite platform.

I agree that we also need drop-off pays and a place where taxis can temporarily wait.